
Class JBT-3- 



Book 



\ 3k 



Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THEOLOGY FOR 
PLAIN PEOPLE 



BY 
REV. G. W. LASHER, D.D 




Cincinnati, Ohio 
1906 



-. \ 



TSBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DFr 13 S906 



& 



Copyright Entry 



CUSS A XXc„ NO. 
COPY B. 






Copyright, 1906, by 
G. W. LASHER. 



r* 
^ 



PREFACE. 



The essays comprised in this volume 
were originally written for and published 
in 

The Journal and Messenger. 

They were intended for plain people, 
such as compose the great majority of the 
readers of a religious paper. They were 
intended and designed to cover the 
ground of a religious and Christian system 
of theology. They do not presume to en- 
ter into all the questions which can be 
raised in a theological treatise. They are 
not intended for scholars, nor to meet the 
quibbles of cavillers. They are for young 
Christians; and it is believed that they 
will not prove unacceptable to those of 

(Hi) 



iv Preface. 



broad and deep experience in the things 
of God. They are put into this form, be- 
cause it is believed that they will thus 
be made useful to those who will not again 
see them in the columns of the paper. 
They are put forth with an earnest desire 
and hope that they may be blessed to the 
hearts and minds of a vast number of hon- 
est, Christian people, lovers of our Lord 
Jesus Christ and his Gospel. 

The author received many assurances 
from men whose opinions he prizes that the 
essays, as published, were meeting a need, 
and were adapted to do great good among 
those for whom they were intended. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Page 
The Source of Authority in Re- 
ligion i 

The God of the Bible — Our God. 8 

Three Persons — One God 14 

By One Man — Sin 20 

How Far Fallen ? 2,7 

A Savior Needed — What Kind of 

Savior ? 34 

The Dead Made Alive — How?. ... 41 

Regeneration — Conversion 48 

Sanctification — Justification ... 53 
Justification — How Effected .... 62 

Freewill — Predestination 69 

The Perseverance of the Saints. 77 

The Resurrection Body 85 

(v) 



vi Table of Contents, 

Page; 

The Issues of "That Day" 92 

The Heavenly World 100 

The Impenitent Dead 106 

The Body of Christ 115 

A Christian Church 122 

Church Officers 129 

The First Christian Duty 136 

Baptism — Its Symbolism 143 

The Supper of the Lord. 150 

Doctrine and Life 160 



THEOLOGY FOR 
PLAIN PEOPLE 



THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN RE- 
LIGION. 



Religion signifies our relation to Deity. 
The heathen has a religion. It has been 
a question, hardly yet fully settled, whether 
there is anywhere on earth a race 2 or a 
clan, so debased, so sunken in ignorance 
and beastialitythat it has no religion, recog- 
nizes no power higher than man or beast. 
By whatever name he may be called, a 
deity, or unseen power, is recognized. All 
heathen of whom history tells us recog- 
nized the presence and the power of "the 
gods," and some of them had a conception 
of a supreme god, exercising authority over 
all others. Judaism had in it the idea of 
one true and only God, "Elohim," "El 
Shaddai," "Jehovah." Abraham had it, and 
his religion was transmitted to his pos- 
terity. 

Religion is a matter between man and 
deity. The Christian religion is a matter 
between the Christian and the God of the 
Bible. It is reasonable to suppose that the 
supreme God, maker of heaven and earth, 
claims the right to tell his creatures how 
he would be worshiped. It is presumptuous 

(2) (1) 



Theology for Plain People. 



in man to stand before his God and under- 
take to tell him what he must accept as 
worship, how he ought to be worshiped, 
whether by external ceremonies or by 
philosophical speculations. Consequently, 
we find in the Book called "The Bible" a 
progressive revelation of the worship ac- 
ceptable to Jehovah God. 

Differing from all other animals, man is 
endued with the power of speech. He is 
able to use articulate sounds as a vehicle 
of thought Words are conventional. They 
are the result of an implicit agreement 
between different persons that certain 
words shall have definite meanings, and 
that these meanings shall inhere in the 
words, except as they are modified by cir- 
cumstances or by agreement. But while 
it is easy to attach words to visible ob- 
jects, calling each by a specific name, it 
is not so easy to invent and use words 
which convey to him who hears the same 
idea that is in the mind of him who speaks. 
Material things can be named and defined, 
but spiritual things can not be so easily 
defined and understood. Consequently, 
spiritual things must often be taught by 
means of signs and illustrations. That 
which is unseen must be revealed to us in 
terms of the seen, or heard — the things 
apprehended by our senses. 



The Source of Authority. 



It was, therefore, needful that Jehovah 
God begin the education of the human race 
by signs and symbols, and by concrete 
illustrations of things unseen. He, being 
Spirit, can not be apprehended by the 
senses, and he must reveal himself in such 
language as the human race can under- 
stand. So we find that, in the earliest 
ages, men were taught by means of things 
seen and handled, just as barbarous tribes 
and peoples are still accustomed to make 
their thoughts and conceptions known by 
means of signs and imagery. There was 
philosophy in the old distinction between 
"physics," that which pertains to things 
seen and handled, and "metaphysics," that 
which can not be apprehended by the 
senses. It was easy to teach concrete 
truths;, that is, truths pertaining to things 
seen and heard and felt. The child, the 
youth could apprehend and comprehend 
these things; but only after much study 
and learning could the more mature mind 
deal with spiritual things or abstract ideas 
—metaphysics. First physics, then meta- 
physics — what comes after physics? 

And so we have our Bible, a volume cov- 
ering many thousands of years of human 
history, written by a great many different 
men, but all conspiring to reveal to us the 
character and the purpose of God in ere*- 



Theology for Plain People. 



tion and in the consummation of human 
affairs. Beginning with the simplest les- 
sons of fact, it goes steadily on, until it 
brings before us, even then in figure, the 
most sublime and wonderful truths which 
the human soul can contemplate and with 
which it is concerned. "In the beginning 
God." In the closing, "Surely I come 
quickly." In this Book we have a revela- 
tion of the infinite and eternal God, and 
from it we learn what he requires of his 
creatures. And so we have it said, "The 
Word of God, which is contained in the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
is the only rule to direct us how we may 
glorify and enjoy him." Here is the source 
of authority in religion. 

The light of nature has its value. The 
invisible things of God are "clearly re- 
vealed in the things that are seen," but 
they can not be discerned by the eye of 
sense alone. There must be a spiritual 
sense, and that sense must be awakened by 
the Spirit of God, before it can discern in 
nature the true and the living God. It is 
one thing to recognize the being of God, 
and quite another thing to determine his 
character, or how he should be approached. 
Only the stupid and besotted can fail to 
see that there is a power higher and 
mightier than nature. He who looks into 



The Source of Authority. 



the heavens can recognize a creator and a 
power outside of and above all these 
things, but he can not determine what is 
the purpose for which all these things are 
created, whether they have any moral qual- 
ity, whether he who made them is good 
or bad; whether he is temporary or eter- 
nal. Before we can conceive how he ought 
to be regarded, or worshiped, we must re- 
ceive another revelation from him. And 
so it is said of the Bible that it principally 
teaches "what man is to believe concern- 
ing God and what duty God requires of 
man." 

True, this Bible is not a systematic trea- 
tise on either theology or ethics. It is 
neither a directory of worship, formally 
detailed, nor is it a treatise on ethics, but, 
in its sixty-six books, it never fails to sug- 
gest, if it does not directly teach, the one 
or the other, all in harmony, though writ- 
ten by so many different hands, during so 
many centuries. The Gcd of Genesis is the 
God of the Apocalypse. The God of Abra- 
ham and of Moses and of David is the 
God of Matthew and of John, of Paul and 
of Peter. And so to-day, as never before, 
men are devoting themselves to a study 
of this wonderful Book, and a Bible-school 
sends out its greeting declaring that its 



Theology for Plain People. 



chief end is to "facilitate a saturation of 
the mind with the words and spirit of the 
Bible, in the assurance that from the soil 
thus nourished all forms of good thinking, 
as well as all manner of good living, spon- 
taneously spring." The words of Stilling- 
fleet, uttered nearly three hundred years 
ago, were never more significant than to- 
day: "The Bible, and the Bible alone* is 
the religion of Protestants"; and that 
means that it should be the source of re- 
ligious authority for all the human race. 
Let critics search it and try it, pick at it 
and carp at it, there it stands, never more 
thoroughly entrenched in the affections 
and confidence of the Christian world than 
it is to-day. The source of authority in 
religion is the Word of God, the Christian's 
Bible. 

No Pope, hierarchy, nor Council of State 
must come between the human soul and the 
written Word of God. Jesus himself recog- 
nized the principle when, three times in his 
temptation, he said to the tempter "It is 
written." "What is written in the law? 
How readest thou?" was his answer to a 
questioner. "Ye do err, not knowing the 
Scripture," was his charge against cavil- 
lers. "Heaven and earth shall pass away," 
but "not one jot nor tittle shall pass from 



The Source of Authority. 



the (written) law, till all be fulfilled/' 
"All this was done that the Scriptures 
might be fulfilled," is the oft-repeated 
testimony of evangelists, All of this 
goes to show that the Scriptures of 
the Old Testament were, and are to 
be, recognized as the Word of God, and 
it is lawful and right to use detached por- 
tions — often very brief passages — for the 
establishment of truth and the conviction 
of the gainsayer. 



THE GOD OF THE BIBLE— OUR GOD. 



The famous Westminster Assembly, 
which met in London in 1643 for the pur- 
pose of agreeing upon articles of faith and 
practice which should become the stand- 
ard of doctrines for England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, before finishing its work on the 
Confession of Faith, turned its atten- 
tion to the framing of a catechism which 
should be put into the hands of the 
young people, and especially should 
be taught to children. It is said that 
when it had been determined to prepare 
the catechism, the Assembly divided among 
its members the various questions to which 
is was desirable to frame answers, and in 
doing so gave to one of the members, a 
very thoughtful, conscientious and pious 
man, the question, WHAT IS GOD? Hav- 
ing received his question, he to whom it 
had been assigned sat and thought for a 
time, and as the session for the day was 
about to close, he rose and said to his 
brethren that he was conscious of having 
received an exceedingly difficult task, 
namely, to define the infinite God. How 

(8) 



The God of the Bible. 9 

could he do it? Would not the Assembly 
make special prayer that he might he 
helped by divine power and grace. 

Accordingly, the moderator called upon 
one of the others to lead in prayer for the 
brother who had asked the favor. The 
brother appealed to stood, surrounded by 
the other members of the body, all solemn- 
ly thinking what it was to define God. 
The brother opened his mouth and broke 
forth as follows: "O thou who art a spirit, 
infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in being, 
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness 
and truth!" and from this he went on to 
pour out his heart in prayer. When he had 
finished, the brother to whom the task 
had been assigned said, "Brethren, I have 
received the answer to your prayer. Here 
is my definition of God: 'God is a spirit, 
infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in his 
being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, 
goodness and truth.' " And from that day 
to this the definition thus framed has been 
regarded as the most comprehensive and 
perfect that has ever been devised by man. 

In his conversation with the woman of 
Samaria, Jesus said, "God is spirit"; not 
a spirit, as it is commonly said. God is 
not one of the spirits any more than he 
is the spirit. There is no indefinite article 



10 Theology for Plain People. 

(a) in the Greek language, and while it 
may be inserted in our translations, yet 
the insertion should be made only when 
it is required to complete the sense. It is 
not thus required in the translation of the 
words of Jesus. He said, "God is spirit, 
and they who worship must worship in 
spirit and in truth." Long before that 
day Zophar had learned that God is infinite, 
and he said, "Canst thou by searching 
find out God? Canst thou find out the 
Almighty unto perfection? It is as high 
as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper 
than hell [the underworld], what canst 
thou know? The measure thereof is longer 
than the earth r.nd broader than the sea." 
Moses, in the wilderness, had a concep- 
tion of the eternity of God when he said, 
"Even from everlasting to everlasting thou 
art God." The apostle James had a concep- 
tion of the unchangeableness of God when 
he said that "in him is no variable mess, 
neither shadow of turning;" and Moses had 
a conception of the same unvariableness 
when he was told by Jehovah himself to 
say to the children of Israel "I AM hath 
sent me unto you." A psalmist had an 
idea of the wisdom of God when he said, 
"His understanding is infinite." Moses 
was taught that the God of Israel is holy; 



The God of the Bible. 11 

but John, on Patmos, had a higher concep- 
tion of his holiness when he saw the living 
creatures round about the throne saying, 
by day and by night, "Holy, holy, holy, 
Lord God almighty, who wast and art, and 
art to come!" Space would fail us to cite 
the passages in which the justice, or right- 
eousness, of God is set forth in our Book. 
Moses said, "Just and right is he;" David 
declared that "justice and judgment are 
the habitation of his throne;" it is the 
righteous God who "trieth the reins and 
the heart;" "a scepter of righteousness is 
the scepter of his kingdom." 

As for the goodness of God, only he who 
loves him can conceive it. But when one 
stands, as Moses stood on the mount with 
Jehovah, and listens to the voice as Moses 
listened, he comes to believe the truth of 
the words spoken in the earthquake: "Je- 
hovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and 
gracious, slow to anger and abundant 
in loving kindness and truth!" In 
the goodness of God is involved his 
mercy, his compassion, his forgiving 
grace. He "visits the iniquities of 
the fathers upon the children of them that 
hate him, but shows mercy unto thou- 
sands of them who love him and keep his 
commandments." And as for his truth, his 



12 Theology for Plain People. 

words stand sure. When he speaks he 
stands fast to his word. Only perverse 
hardness and persistence in sin prevents 
him from the exercise of his goodness; 
but when he has decreed judgment, noth- 
ing can stay his hand. The promises made 
to Abraham stand good to-day, and those 
who trust him find them sure. His prom- 
ise to David kept him from executing his 
judgments upon the sinners of several gen- 
erations. True as well as righteous is he 
in all his ways. 

Such is the God revealed to us in the 
Bible; and such is our God. No man, 
neither any council of men, has been able 
to devise such a God. For these thousands 
of years men have been seeking to find 
some flaw in his character and devise some 
amendment or improvement in it. But 
their devices have utterly failed. They 
have been able to get some idea of power 
and a faint conception of eternal being. 
But they have failed to conceive a God of 
infinite wisdom, of infinite holiness, in- 
finite goodness, and infinite truth. The 
god of the scientist is a god of law, subject 
to his own laws, the laws of "nature." He 
is without sight, or hearing, or love, or 
compassion. Admitting that he is the 
maker of a vast organism, or machine, of 



The God of the Bible. 13 

which our earth forms a small part, and 
admitting that he made the laws which 
prevail in our earthly system, he can not 
change his law, neither can he deliver any 
of his creatures from the fate which im- 
pends over them. The earth and its con- 
tents is a great mill which runs on, indif- 
ferent to results, until it has exhausted 
itself, there being no eye to pity and no 
arm to save. If good come it is according 
to law; and if evil, pain and misery, it is 
because of the movements of the machine 
which knows no pity, no mercy. But the 
God of the Bible — our God — is a God of 
love and mercy, compassionate towards 
those who love him, but just and right to 
forever turn away from those who mis- 
trust him or refuse allegiance to him. 
Happy for us if, in truth, the God of the 
Bible is our God. 



THREE PERSONS— ONE GOD. 



The mystery of all mysteries and least 
comprehensible to the human mind is the 
Trinity of persons in one God. There are 
many mysteries connected with the divine 
personality and with the works of our 
God. Even the law and the fact of gravi- 
tation is a mystery. The electric current 
is a mystery. What is called Nature, con- 
cerning which Science and devotees of 
Science have told us so many things, and 
which many assume that they fully under- 
stand, is full of mysteries. How the vege- 
table grows is a mystery. How the animal 
grows is no less a mystery. How animal 
life is sustained is a mystery. Men can 
talk wisely and learnedly about these 
things, but they do not reach ultimate 
truth. There are heights and depths which 
they have not yet reached. What wonder, 
then, that they have not reached the solu- 
tion of the mystery of "three Persons in 
one God, the same in substance, equal in 
power and glory"? 

It does not trouble us much when we are 
told that "in the beginning God created the 

(14) 



Three Persons — One God. 15 

heavens and the earth." We think that 
we can understand that. But we are also 
told that from "the beginning," the eternal 
Word "was in the world, and the world 
was made by him"; and another Scripture 
says that "through him" God made the 
worlds; for "the same was in the begin- 
ning with God." God made the world. 
Christ made the world. Both Father and 
Sen were present and acting when the 
world was made. &nd not only so, but at 
the same time "the Spirit of God moved, 
or brooded, over the face of the waters." 
"The Spirit is life"; he is eternal; he is 
omnipresent — "Whither shall 1 go from thy 
Spirit?" He is omniscient; he "searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things of God." 
He is omnipotent, working and bestowing 
all gifts of miracles, since "all these work- 
eth that one and the selfsame Spirit." He 
dwells in the saints; he regenerates the 
soul; he quickens the mortal body. All 
this we trust we can understand. It seems 
simple, easy of comprehension. And yet, 
it is all a mystery. 

Jesus said that he knew the Father as 
fully as the Father knew the Son; that 
he did nothing of himself, but was always 
doing the works of his Father; that he did 
the same things and only the same things 



16 Theology for Plain People. 

which his Father did; that the Father was 
:n him and he in the Father. He spoke of 
a glory which he had with the Father be- 
fore the world was, and the Father has 
said of the Son, "Thy throne, O God, is 
forever and ever." The Father has "life 
in himself," and the Son has "life in him- 
self." The Father and the Son, are persons 
distinct from each other, and the Holy 
Spirit is a person distinct from either or 
both. True, the Greek word pneuma, 
meaning spirit, is in the neuter gender, 
and so we constantly speak of the Holy 
Spirit as "it." But we know better than 
to think of him as something less than 
a person. All other Greek words refer- 
ring to him are in the masculine gender, 
and there are several of them. He is the 
Comforter, the Instructor, Guide, Patron, 
Advocate, and in all these characters he 
is a personality. He stands with the Fa- 
ther and with the Son in the command to 
baptize. 

It is not difficult to understand that 
the Father, is God; no more difficult 
is it to understand that the Son is God, 
and no more is it difficult to under- 
stand that the Holy Spirit is God. 
Least of all is it difficult to understand 
that there is but one God. Finally, wo can 



Three Persons — One God. 17 

say without being troubled: "To God the 
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
Spirit be praise, might, majesty and .io- 
minion, world without end." 

What is our trouble, then? We have 
none, until we undertake to solve the mys- 
tery of three in one and one in three. 
But we are to know of a truth tha.; it is 
a mystery — a thing beyond our compre- 
hension. Yet it is not the only mystery; 
only one of the mysteries. If we could 
understand it all; if we could know God 
as we know each other, we should cease 
to worship him as God. He would be com- 
monplace to us. Let us first compass the 
idea of eternity, the idea of omnipresence, 
the idea of omnipotence, the idea of omni- 
science, then we may demand the ability 
to understand the Trinity. 

A scientific journal has just told us that 
"It is now known to modern mentalists, 
lately newly discovered — the ancient stu- 
dents of mind knew it — that our minds are 
unable to think of the following six words: 
Space, infinity, eternity, creation, begin- 
ning, and end. They are all unknowable, 
and the chief mathematicians of the world 
do not try to think of them — a sheer waste 
of time." Yet there are those who demand 
that they understand the Trinity, before 

(3) 



18 Theology for Plain People. 

they accept the idea of three persons in 
one God. Some of those who make this 
demand regard themselves, and want us 
to regard them, as wise men. 

Think of this — it is Science: The dis- 
tance from the earth to our sun is 93,000,- 
000 of miles. The distance from our sun 
to its nearest neighbor among the stars 
is 25,000,000,000,000 miles. "An object mov- 
ing on a straight line at the rate of one 
mile a minute would require more than 
48,500,000, nearly 49,000,000 of years, to tra- 
verse the distance from the sun to the 
nearest fixed star. Yet our God and our 
Christ made both the sun and the star, 
and our God is there now as truly as he 
is here. Again, "light is known to be in 
motion always with the tremendous speed 
of 186,000 miles per second. There are in 
our siderial or calendar year 31,228,149 sec- 
onds, and the time required for light to 
traverse the distance between our own sun 
and the nearest fixed star is 43,572 years." 
Yet our God is there, and he is here at the 
same time. The distance from the earth 
to the sun is 93,000,000 miles, and yet the 
distance from the sun to the fixed star 
nearest to it is 275,000 times 93,000,000 
miles. Yet our God is at both the sun 
and that star at the same time. And yet 



Three Persons — One God. 19 

men say that they can not believe in the 
Trinity — Three Persons in One God — be- 
cause they can not understand it. For- 
sooth ! 

But why talk about the Trinity? Be- 
cause three persons have to do with man's 
salvation, with the happiness of the Chris- 
tian, with the glory to be revealed to the 
saint and in the saint a few years hence. 
So sure as we do not accept the doctrine 
of the Trinity, we fail of the greatest bless- 
ing connected with the religion of the 
Bible. It is not speculation, nor is it 
imagination. It is a revelation from God. 



BY ONE MAN— SIN. 



No one denies or doubts that sin is in 
the world. It is everywhere evident. The 
question is, How did it come here? Did 
God originate and create it? Did he cre- 
ate a sinner — a being in his very nature, a 
sinner — sinful? No one believes it. All 
mat God "created and made" was "very 
good." Yet sin is in the world. If it was 
not here "in the beginning"; if it was not 
crated; if sin was not an element in 
something which God created, it must have 
come in after the creation had been com- 
pleted. Sin is here, and it is found only 
in humanity. The sun, moon, stars, the 
round earth, the living things that move 
on the earth — none of these is a sinner. 
The sinner is man — the race of man. 

It follows, then, that sin came after man 
came. Not that there was no sin in any 
part of the universe; but there was no sin 
on this earth till after the creation of 
man. And now it is found that sin has 
affected every member of the human race. 
There is no exception, whether in the civil- 
ized or the savage races; in the refined and 

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By One Man — Sin. 21 

cultured or the rough and uncouth barbar- 
ian — all are sinners. The hoary-headed and 
thp infant both are sinners. The thoughtful 
man confesses it. The Scriptures tell us 
that the infant is not excepted. "The law 
01 sin and death" has been in the world 
from the first until now. Death is the 
penalty of sin, and where there is no sin 
there is no dying. "Nevertheless death 
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over 
them who had not sinned after the simili- 
tude (after the same manner of disobedi- 
ence) of Adam's transgression " Little chil- 
dren, infants, died in the primitive ages, 
before the days of Abraham, before Moses 
and the formal law. Did the good God the 
maker of man, inflict death upon perfect 
innocency? We can not believe that he 
did. How then shall we account for the 
presence of sin and for the effect of sin 
in the human race? 

That is a question which has puzzle*! 
philosophers; and the world is full of men 
who are unwillling to receive instruction 
but are seeking to solve the problem of 
sin by their own wisdom. Generation after 
generation of men have been at work on 
the problem; but they have made out very 
poorly. No sooner has one cried "Eureka!" 
— 1 have found it — than another has cried 



22 Theology for Plain People. 

out "Erratum!"— a mistake. And so they 
have been going on through the centuries 
one wise in his own eyes, a neighbor com- 
ing and searching him out. The philoso- 
phers have devoured each other, and are as 
lean to-day as though they had never 
been fed on vanity. We are not sorry 
that these philosophers have been at work, 
for they have demonstrated the limitation 
of human wisdom and the utter inability 
of man, to solve the problem by any other 
process than that which Jehovah marked 
out for them, when it was said that 
Adam "begat a son in his own image, 
after his likeness" — in the image he bore 
after he had sinned. Since that day every 
human soul has borne the same image, 
the image of a sinner. The Deluge swept 
away the great multitude; but the eight 
souls saved were still sinners, and soon 
proved it. They begat sinners, and death 
reigned. 

The philosophers having failed, how do 
we account for the presence of sin in the 
world, and for the fact of sinfulness in 
every human soul? If, at the end of sixty 
centuries, human wisdom has not solved 
the question, surely we are not so vain as 
to spend time over it now. What then? 
We will take "the Scriptures of truth" and 



Bu One Man — Sin. 23 

allow them to answer for us. Here is wis- 
dom. He that readeth, let him understand. 
Jesus tells us that he came into the world 
to destroy the works of the devil, and he 
assumed that every person whom he met 
was a victim of the devil's doings. He came 
to call "not the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance," and he held that repentance 
was due on the part of every one. It was sin 
that nailed Him to the cross. Yet he only 
could not be convicted of sin, and only sin- 
ners can be benefited by his death. By the 
pen of one whom he raised up for the pur- 
pose God tells us how it came about that 
"sin entered into the world, and death 
by sin, so that death passed upon all men, 
for that all hav r e sinned." He tells us that 
it was "by one man who sinned," that man 
Adam, the first created and the only cre- 
ated man — the father of the whole human 
race. We have learned that "authority in 
religion" is the Word of God. To this we 
turn and read (Rom. v.). "Therefore, as 
through one man sin entered into the 
world, and death by sin; and so death 
passed unto all men, for that all sinned"— 
Sinned, when ; how? Sinned in the first 
sinner. . . . "For if by the trespass of one 
the many died." — Who was the offender? 
Who wrought the havoc? It was the one 



24 Theology for Plain People. 

man, the father of the race — Adam. For 
the judgment came of one unto condemna- 
tion/' "For if by the trespass of the one 
death reigned through the one." Terrible 
fact. "The one" was the first sinner, and 
he innocculated his race. Sin entered the 
blood; it affected the whole man, and 
every man. "So then, as through one tres- 
pass the judgment came unto all men to 
condemnation." Not only by one sinner, 
but by one trespass. . It was not a course 
of sinning, by which the sinner became 
worse and worse; but it was by one single 
act of sinning, or trespass. "For as 
through the one man's disobedience the 
many were made sinners." There it is 
again. He "who held the pen seemed to 
know what he was writing, and whether 
it was the pen or the writer, the guiding 
hand was God's. All that was written is 
in perfect harmony with what we learn 
by the tenor of the whole great volume. 
We read it in the third chapter of Gen- 
esis, and we trace it all the way down: 
Sin, death; sin, death. "None righteous, 
not so much as one." "All sinned and 
came short of the glory of God." Only 
two men of them all did not die, and their 
rescue from death was simply to show what 
Jehovah could have done with all the race, 



By One Man — Sin. 25 

had all been fit for the translation. At 
another time it may be permitted us to say 
something about the way of deliverance; 
but now our thought must be confined to 
the fact of sin and its penalty. 

"Sin is lawlessness." It is not simply 
an act; it is a condition. The first human 
sin was not simply an external, "overt" act, 
beginning and ending with the sinner. It 
was induced by a tempter, and it ruined 
the tempted. It effected an uncleanness out 
of which it has never been possible to 
bring a clean thing. He who never sins 
may be a sinner. Such is the infant. 
While vet unable to commit an act of sin, 
the soul is sinful; it was born in sin, with 
a sinful nature/ and only the redemption 
purchased by the blood of Christ can de- 
liver it from the penalty of sin. Man 
iooketh on the outward appearance; but 
the Lord Iooketh upon (and into) the 
heart; for it is out of the heart that the 
evil things proceed. We can take account 
of only the external act, and we forbid 
judgment upon one for merely thinking 
evil. But he who seeth in secret search- 
eth the heart and trieth the reins of the 
children of men. There may be a repent- 
ance of sinful acts, but there is need of a 
deeper repentance, because of the evil pro- 



26 Theology for Plain People. 

pensity; because when we would do 
good, evil is present with us. It is the sin 
in the man which takes occasion, when the 
law enters, to deceive and slay the self- 
righteousi sinner. A beam of sunshine gleams 
through the shutters of a darkened room. 
We enter and notice that there is dust 
there. It was not the beam of sunshine 
which produced it. It was not our en- 
trance. The dust was there before we en- 
tered, and in spite of the sunbeam. So sin 
is in the soul, quiet, but ready to break 
out at any moment. And all because "by 
one man sin entered into the world." 

Yet for all this our God has provided 
a remedy to be enjoyed by him who will. 



HOW FAR FALLEN'? 



It is never pleasant to contemplate sin. 
especially is it not pleasant to contemplate 
one's own sins. It is easy for most people 
to admit that they are sinners, provided we 
allow them to follow with the remark: "We 
are all sinners." The great virtue of the 
publican's prayer was that he confessed 
himself to be "the sinner." (In the best 
Greek manuscripts the article the is before 
the word sinner.) The man got no comfort 
out of the thought that "all men are sin- 
ners." He was not troubled about others; 
his trouble was with himself; he was the 
sinner. And until one comes to feel that, 
he is not in a condition of true repentance. 
The truly repentant soul does not repent 
for others beside itself. 

There is among us great objection to the 
phrase "total depravity." To many people 
it is like a red rag to a mad bull; it rouses 
antagonism and protest. And yet the words 
belong to a great fact. They do not mean 
that the sinner, the depraved, is just as bad 
as he can be. On the other hand, it means 
that every part of the sinner is affected by 

(27) 



28 Theology for Plain People. 

sin. The soul of man is an indivisible unit. 
It can not be part one thing and part 
another — partly good and partly bad. It 
is either on God's side, or it is against Gad. 
In its natural state every soul is against 
God. In a regenerate state every soul is 
on God's side. Herein is the radical differ- 
ence between an unregenerated and a re- 
generated soul. To get it on God's side 
and keep it on God's side every human 
soul, having sinned and fallen in Adam, 
has to be regenerated, "born anew," "born 
from above," "born of God." 

While it is true that the human soul is 
a unit, an undivisible entity, it is true that 
it has many faculties, and it is capable of 
a great many motions and motives. It is 
endowed with the powers of thought, mem- 
ory, reasoning, emotion and will, and when 
we speak of depravity, or sinfulness, we 
recognize all these as affected by sin. And 
not only so, sin has so affected the soul that 
it can not recover itself. It is not only 
true, as said in the old New England 
Primer; 

" In Adam's fall 
We sinned all"; 

Paul has said: "All have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God"; and it is 
true, as the Scriptures clearly teach, and 



How Far Fallen? 29 

as experience proves, that the fallen ha3 
no power of self-restoration to the state 
from which he fell. Over this question the- 
ologians have wrangled ever since the days 
of Pelagius, and a great many different the- 
ories have been embraced and argued, but 
there still remains the great fact that Jesus 
Christ came into the world to save sinners, 
and it can not be that he would have come 
to save them, that he would have laid down 
his life on the cross, if there had been any 
possibility of the sinner's saving himself. 
Every soul which accepts Jesus as its Savior 
lias to confess that it could not have been 
saved by any other means. Every redeemed 
soul is a witness that salvation is wholly 
yi grace in Christ Jesus. There can be only 
two conceivable wa3 7 s by which a human 
soul can enter into the life of God; one of 
these by works, the other by grace. But the 
New Testament distinctly declares that the 
life of God can not be achieved by works, 
and it as distinctly declares that it is al- 
ways and in every case by grace. 

The Scriptures also declare that what is 
of grace is not of works, and that what is 
of works is not of grace. Moreover, grace 
and works can not be harmonized with 
each other. The soul can not plead part 
grace and part works. The word salvation 
means something done for one which he 



30 Theology for Plain People. 

could not do for himself. One who is not 
lost can not be said to be found. One who 
can recover himself can not be said to be 
saved. Jesus came to seek and to save the 
lost, those who could not find their own 
way into life. For four thousand years men 
had been trying to save themselves by 
various devices, and God had been work- 
ing with them by means of the law, and 
yet the race was no better than at the be- 
ginning. The first son of Adam was the 
most monstrous sinner who ever lived, 
and the second son was one of the most 
pious. Yet neither of them could save him- 
self. Abel offered bloody sacrifices, be- 
cause he believed them to be pleasing to 
God, and Cain offered something else, be- 
cause he defied God; and because he defied 
God he killed his own brother, and did it 
because of his hatred of God; because God 
respected Abel's offering, and did not re- 
spect his. 

So then, we say, that in the fall of man 
he became altogether helpless, so far as his 
salvation is concerned. There was left in 
him no power by which he could recover 
himself. Every attribute and faculty of his 
being became affected and wrecked by sin. 
Sin enters into every act of life. The most 
pious saint of whom we have ever heard 
was prone to confess sin. Those who have 



How Far Fallen? 31 

lived nearest to God have been most ready 
to acknowledge their sinfulness. The God- 
ly John Newton confessed: "If I pray, or 
hear, or read, sin is mixed with all I do. " 
In, the first three chapters of Romans Paul 
tells us what is the true condition of the 
human race in its relation to God, point- 
ing out various forms which sin takes. The 
picture is a most distressing one. It is 
black and filthy. And yet it has to be con- 
fessed that it is true to the life. Every- 
thing there said of humanity and of hu- 
man nature can be proved to be true. If 
some of us are not guilty of all the sins 
there enumerated, it is simply because we 
have not been subjected to the same temp- 
tations, or have not been reared amid the 
same surroundings. Christianity, weak as 
some would have us believe it to be, has 
done a great deal to keep us from some 
of the degrading sins mentioned in those 
chapters. The impossibility of self-recov- 
ery on the part of such sinners is illus- 
trated by Jehovah, when he says, through 
Jeremiah (xiii. 23): "Can the Ethiopian 
change his skin, or the leopard his spots? 
Then may ye also do good that are accus- 
tomed to do evil." True, men may reform 
their habits, in some things, and make 
great improvement in their manner of life; 
but by no process of self-education can 



32 Theology for Plain People. 

they get the presence of sin out of their 
souls. Those who have made the highest 
attainments have been ready to declare, 
and have declared, that they were saved 
not by works of righteousness, but by 
grace, the mercy and the power of God. 

William Carey, the great missionary, who 
spent over forty years in the most arduous 
missionary service, wished to Have en- 
graved on his tombstone: 

" A wretched, poor and helpless worm, 
On thy kind arms 1 fall." 

Paul (Rom. v. 6) says truly: "For while 
we were yet without strength Christ died 
for the ungodly." That is, while yet man 
was unable to save himself, Christ died for 
just such weak sinners. Ungodly men do 
not recognize this want of strength, or abil- 
ity to help themselves, but insist upon 
thinking that they do well, because they 
are not as bad as they might be. They 
seem to think that if they can make it ap- 
pear that they do more good things than 
bad thingg (they themselves keeping the 
books and estimating the value of their 
deeds) then their good deeds, by overbal- 
ancing the bad, entitle them to life and 
blessedness. They do not understand, or 
will not confess even to themselves, that 
every violation of the divine law is fatal 



How Far Fallen? 33 

to their hope. By one act of sin Adam 
fell, and yet men think that they can com- 
mit untold sins without falling, or forfeit- 
ing blessedness. They do not seem to know 
that they have already lost every possible 
means of saving themselves, and that their 
doom is sealed; that there is no way of 
deliverance except by acknowledging their 
sins and casting themselves upon the mercy 
of God. 

Just here is the greatest obstacle in the 
way of the salvation, of lost souls. The 
sinners will not acknowledge their sinful- 
ness, their need of deliverance by some 
power higher and mightier than themselves. 
They will not believe that they are lost, 
and, consequently, will not come to Christ 
that they may have life. And this is con- 
clusive evidence that sin has utterly ruined 
the race, and that there is in man no pow- 
er to overcome the effects of sin in his 
soul. God must do it, or the soul must 
perish for ever. 



(4) 



A SAVIOR NEEDED— WHAT KIND OF 
SAVIOR? 



The man was made upright, in, the image 
of his Maker. He was possessed of quali- 
ties and faculties the ideal of him who cre- 
ated hiim. But these qualities and facul- 
ties were not as the attributes of the Cre- 
ator, infinite. When put to the test, the 
man fell, and all his qualities and faculties 
became affected by the fall. Two painters 
were painting a cornice on a high build- 
ing. A rope supporting the swinging scaf- 
fold broke; one of the men saved himself, 
the ©ther fell to the pavement. These eyes 
saw the body two minutes after it struck 
the sidewalk. Nat a muscle moved. The 
man was dead and helpless, but he was no 
more dead and helpless than was the man 
who fell in disobedience to divine law. He 
fell less than a hundred feet, but he could 
not recover what he had lost. Not one 
member only, but every member of his 
body was dead. Other men could lift up 
and bear away the body, but they could not 
restore the life; could not make him what 
he was before. No more can the sinner. 
(34) 



What Kind of Savior Needed. 35 

whether the first or the last, recover him- 
self and pat himself right with God. 

What then? God must do it. It must 
b^ done by divine power, a power no lesn 
than that of the Creator. He could remove 
the dead and create a new race, but he 
chose to recover the fallen, and make more 
glorious that which had been ruined in the 
fall. To do that would give mere glory to 
the Redeemer than would the creation of 
a second race. Not simply restoration to 
the lost estate was the purpose, but the ex- 
hibition of divine wisdom, love and mercy, 
and the production of something better 
than that which had suffered. Not simply 
restoration, but something infinitely better 
was the purpose formed and put into exe- 
cution. 

How? He who would act as the Redeem- 
er and Deliverer must be able to act a 
double part. He must be God and man in 
the same person. He must know God, the 
offended, and he must know man, the of- 
fender, the ruined. He must know divine 
power, glory, purity, holiness, and he must 
know man's weakness, his perverted pro- 
pensities, his environments, his tempta- 
tions, the power of his enemy. He must 
be able to lay hold upon the throne of God 
with one hand, and lay hold upon the dead 
sinner with the other. He must have 



36 Theology for Plain People. 

power to beget a new life where the old one 
had gone out. He must be able to effect an 
enduring change, so that there should be 
no danger of another lapse, a second ruin. 
He must recognize the personality of the 
sinner, his free-will, his helplessness, and, 
at the same time, his disposition to assert 
his independence and self-sufficiency, his 
hardness of heart and his blindness of mind 
— every element of his nature affected dis- 
astrously by the fall. It was an occasion 
for pity, an impulse to help, and a purpose 
to persevere until the purpose might be ac- 
complished. 

The help provided must not be forced 
upon the recipient in such a way that he 
can not fail of receiving it. As the first 
sinner was endowed with free-will, so every 
other sinner must be free to choose or to 
reject. Good and evil must still be kept 
before the sinner, as they had been set be- 
fore the father of the race. Beside, it must 
be recognized that the fall has actually 
produced "enmity against God," upon 
whom the sinner laid the blame, in that 
he had been exposed to temptation and had 
not been so hedged about as to render his 
sin impossible. All these things must be 
taken into account in any effort to over- 
come the effects of the fall. It was a great 



What Kind of Savior Needed. 37 

problem; only the divino mind, the infinite, 
could solve it. 

A question of the centuries has been 
"Cur Deus Homo?" — Why did God become 
man? At the end of the centuries there are 
those who declare themselves unable to an- 
swer it. Generation after generation has 
been engaged upon it, and while goodly 
numbers have accepted the fact and have 
with it received a blessing, even eternal 
life, others have still made proof of the 
utter inability of the fallen to recover him- 
self. Instead of welcoming the Deliverer 
and gladly accepting his help in the for- 
lorn extremity, the multitude has been ig- 
noring him, on the one hand, or question- 
ing the facts and the motives, on the other. 
The sinner has been slow to believe that 
the offer of salvation could be absolutely 
free, and that he who made it was not 
moved by a desire for personal prof- 
it. Though declared to be free, the sin- 
ner has argued that there must be some 
return for it; that he who receives it must 
work for it, either before or after Its be- 
stowment. 

And so there has been a great deal of 
trouble just there. Just at the gate of 
abounding mercy, and in the immediate 
presence of the Great Deliverer, men have 



38 Theology for Plain People. 

set them down and argued, either as to the 
futility of the offer, the quality of the 
mercy, the necessity for the redemption, 
or the certainty of its accomplishment. 
And so they have sat there and reasoned 
with themselves or with each other, till 
the door closed upon them, and they went 
away into the everlasting darkness — un- 
saved. Sin — the first sin — thus perverted 
and twisted human faculties and rendered 
so difficult the undertaking of redemption. 
In this respect man often proved stronger 
to resist than was God to save. 

A. savior was needed; of that there could 
be no reasonable question. God saw it; 
Jesus, the Son of God, saw it; and the Holy 
Spirit saw it; and angels saw it. The God- 
head did not hesitate to enter upon it, and 
the angels became willing messengers and 
witnesses to help on the work. The Father 
could sit upon the throne and order the af- 
fairs of his universe; the Son could con- 
descend to be the special medium of re- 
demption, and the Holy Spirit could abide 
his time to consummate, by his peculiar 
power, and conserve everything that might 
be achieved and secured. The love of the 
Son prompted him to offer himself; the love 
of the Father prevailed upon him to con- 
sent, and the love of the Spirit caused him 
to put forth his gentle, sweet and wooing 



What Kind of Savior Needed. 39 

voice, entering into the depths of the .soul, 
humbled and subdued, and to there take up 
his abode, making that soul a new creation 
in the name of the Redeemer, to the glory 
of God the Father. 

The centuries passed; other means were 
shown to be ineffectual; no lasting and re- 
liable result had been accomplished, when 
the Son of the Highest appeared in the low- 
liness of a stable, born of a woman, yet he 
of whom Moses in the law and the prophets 
had written and spoken. Born, of a virgin, 
he was the Son of God and the son of Man. 
He received the testimony of the Father to 
his fitness for the work, when it was 
acknowledged, in a voice from the excel- 
lent glory: "This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased.' Thus, and b} 
such testimony, did the Man of Galilee re 
ceive the assurance, in which we also share, 
that he was just such a one as God would 
have to do the work demanded. At the 
same time the Holy Spirit bore witness by 
a dove-like descent, from which time for- 
ward he remained upon the Son of man. 

By the witness borne at the Jordan, and 
on other occasions, the Man of Nazareth 
gave proof that he was just such a Savior 
as the Creator was pleased to accept as the 
redeemer of the fallen. He was not self-sent, 
nor self-imposed. He bore witness of him- 



40 Theology for Plain People. 

self, the Father bore witness of him, and the 
Iioly Spirit sealed the testimony when he 
took up his abode in the hearts which had 
been opened to receive the Lord Jesus. Not 
as by a flash of lightning, the work of a 
moment, was the redemption to be accom- 
plished. It must be wrought out in the 
presence of the sinners. Men must see and 
hear, and judge for themselves whether 
they would have this Savior. If they ac- 
cepted him. followed him, loved him, called 
themselves by his name, and entered into 
living sympathy with him, they gave ex- 
ternal proof that they would be loyal to 
the God against whom they had always been 
in revolt. It would be a treaty of peace 
and it would be recognized by the peace 
which came to possess the soul. This would 
be proof to them as it was to God also, that 
the old antagonism had ceased; that from 
that time onward love and confidencee and 
filial fellowship were to exist and increase 
between the Creator and the fallen crea- 
ture. It was a matter of free will a free 
Choice, but so brought about that he was 
sweetly constrained, made willing by the 
blessed power of the wooing Spirit. Such 
a need — such a Savior. 



THE DEAD MADE ALIVE— HOW? 



There are those who do not believe that 
Jesus, the First-begotten of God, rose from 
the dead according to the Scriptures. 
There are those who can not believe that 
a human body, dead and laid in the bosom 
of earth, can be made to live again. Yet 
Jesus said: "He that believeth on me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
"The dead shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God, and they who hear shall live." 
Paul reasoned truly: "If by the trespass of 
one the many died, much more did the 
grace 01 God and the gift by grace abound 
unto many." And he says to the Ephe- 
sians: :"And you hath he quickened (made 
alive) who were dead in trespasses and in 
sins." So it is reckoned that there is a 
physical death and there is a spiritual 
death — a death of the body and a death of 
the soul. Every human being has already 
inherited the latter, and every one is sure 
to experience the former. So far as he 
himself is concerned, "no man has power 
over the spirit to retain the spirit, neither 
hath he power in the day of death." No 

(41) 



42 Theology for Plain People. 

one wno has come to years expects to es- 
cape the death of the body. No one who 
knows his own soul, or has learned from 
the Word of God, can fail to recognize 
himself as "dead in sin." 

The question arises: How is it possible 
for the dead to be made alive? Who can 
raise up the dead body? Who can revive 
the dead soul? He who can do the one 
can do the other, and only he. We remem- 
ber that in the vision of the valley, Ezekiel 
saw the scattered bones brought together, 
bone to its fellow bone; he saw the sinews 
come back to the bones, and the flesh come 
up upon the sinews; then he saw the skin 
come back upon the flesh — all the mem- 
bers of the bodies in their places and all 
perfect as in the day of death. But the 
bodies lay there as helpless as when the 
bones were scattered. There was no 
power in any one of them to raise itself 
up or move a muscle. Unless something 
else had been done for them, they must 
have mouldered back to dust again. It 
was only when the prophet had called, at 
the commandment of God, that the breath 
came, the spirits entered into them, and 
they "arose and stood upon their feet, an 
exceeding great army." Only he who 
could breathe the breath of life into those 



The Dead Made Alive — How? 43 

slain ones has power to make alive the 
soul tnat is "dead in trespasses and in 
sins." 

To the dead soul it is a matter of no con- 
sequence that God has been good in giv- 
ing and preserving life; in giving social 
instincts and providing for social friend- 
ships; in giving abundance, so that man's 
life can be more than existence; in giving 
Jesus Christ, the God-man, to live a human 
life, endure human woes, suffer the pains 
of humanity, and finally die a human 
death, lifted up from the earth, that he 
might draw all men unto himself. All of 
these things matter not to the dead soul. 
With all these things before him, the dead 
sinner can continue in his sins and utterly 
ignore the call to a newness of life. He 
does not feel the need of anything more 
than he has; does not regard himself as 
lost; does not allow the goodness of God 
to lead him to repentance. He is dead — a 
dead sinner, on his way down to the pit of 
despair, where "their worm dieth not and 
the fire is not Quenched." 

Now, how is this dead sinner to be made 
alive? There is only one answer to the 
question. Certainly he will never revive 
himself. The dead has no power to re- 
vivify itself. Only one who had died ever 



44 Theology for Plain People. 

came to life by his own power, and that 
was Jesus, of whom it is said: "In him 
was life." He had and holds power over 
death, having wrested it from his enemy. 
And yec this Jesus does not do it by' his 
own personal might. He has a second self, 
one whom he is accustomed to send in his 
own name, or in the name of the Father, 
and to him has been given "the power of 
the Spirit of Life." He is life. He is one 
with the Father and the Son, and yet he is 
a distinct person to whom has been as- 
signed tho work of vivifying human souls 
and winning them back to the Father an 
to the Son. Of himself Jesus said: "What- 
soever he seeth the Father do that doeth 
the Son likewise"; and so it may be said 
that wnatsoever he seeth the Son do that 
doeth the Spirit likewise. The Son hav- 
ing finished his work of redemption, dying 
on the cross and rising from the tomb, 
ascended to his Father, and fulfilled hi* 
promise to send the Spirit, who should 
abide among men and do all that is need- 
ful to the working out of the divine plan 
of salvation. It has been said of Christ 
that he is "the organ of external revela- 
tion," while the Holy Spirit is "the organ 
of internal revelation." Christ, having 
finished his work on earth, has gone into 



The Dead Made Alive — Howt 45 

the heavens, there to intercede in the 
presence of God for his saints, while the 
Holy Spirit remains here on earth prepar- 
ing a people for the abode of blessedness 
which Christ has gone to prepare for 
them. Christ prepares the mansions; the 
Holy bpirit prepares the saints for the 
mansions. 

And he begins at the beginning. He be- 
gins with the dead sinner, the utterly in- 
different, the hostile, it may be with the 
objecter. the resentful, the willfully resist- 
ing. No matter. It is for the Holy Spirit 
to begin and to carry on the work. It is 
to him a matter of no consequence that 
the sinner is dead, that he is helpless, that 
he is obdurate, that he is resentful. By 
his omnipotence he turns the hearts of 
men "as the rivers of water are turned.' 
But for him, no flesh could be saved. But 
for him, Christ had died in vain. But for 
him, tne spectacle of Gethsemane and of 
Calvary would have been meaningless, and 
the results futile. But for him Saul of 
Tarsus would have arrested saints in Da- 
mascus, probably Ananias among them, 
and would have taken them to Jerusalem 
for punishment. But for him, Cornelius of 
Cesarea would have remained in the dark- 
ness of heathenism. But for him, the Gos 



46 Theology for Plain People. 

pel would have been powerless, whether in 
Judea, or Samaria, or Philippi, or in Rome. 
But for him, Martin Luther would have 
remained a blind monk in his cell at Wit- 
tenberg. But for him, Benjamin Keech, 
and William Kiffin, and Hanserd Knolleys, 
and Roger Williams would have been as 
ignorant of the way of life as were many 
of those who sought to obstruct the truth 
and to put out the gleam of light whicn 
shone through these men to the enlighten 
ment of the multitude of true Baptists 
now trying to honor God and work right- 
eousness in the earth. All along down 
through the ages the Holy Spirit has been 
at work in and upon individual souls, oc- 
casionally in and upon groups and conven- 
tions of souls, giving new life and guiding 
Into the truth as it was promised by the 
Son that he should do. 

How shall the dead be made alive? The 
answer is ready, and yet it is not so sim- 
ple as it may appear. There is no lack 
of power; there is no lack of love; there 
is no lack of desire to win the ungodly 
from error to truth, from life to death. 
And yet, it is not for us to know why it is 
that two men may be on the house-top, one 
taken and the other left; two women 
grinding together, one taken and the other 



The Dead Made Alive — How? 47 

left; husband and wife bound together in 
love, yet separated, the one taken and the 
other left; children in the same family, 
the same surroundings, the same educa- 
tion, the same parental care and love, one 
taken — two, three — others left. We can 
not settle this question of why? We know 
only tne facts. "Neither did this man sin 
nor his parents, but that the works of God 
should be made manifest in him." "Even 
so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy 
sight." "The natural man receiveth not 
the things of the Spirit of God, for they 
are foolishness unto him; neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually 
discerned." "The Spirit himself beareth 
witness with our spirits that we are the 
children of God." "The Spirit also helpetb 
our infirmities." "He that searcheth the 
hearts knoweth what is the mind of the 
Spirit, because he maketh intercession for 
the saints according to the will of God." 
"He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap life everlasting." 

So God has provided that the dead sin- 
ner may have life and may conquer every 
foe, finally entering in through the gate 
into the city. The Holy Spirit makes the 
work of Jesus effective. 



REGENERATION— CONVERSION. 



They are not the same thing. Neither 
word is used frequently in the New Testa- 
ment, but both are used often enough to 
show that they signify distinct ideas. A 
man may be converted and not regenerated; 
he can hardly be regenerated without being 
converted. The one is an inward, heart 
experience, the other is the outward mani- 
festation of the new life realized in regen- 
eration. Conversion may occur several 
times in human experience; regeneration 
can occur but once. The verb from which 
the word "conversion" comes is used sev- 
eral times in the New Testament, and 
means to turn about, to change a course 
of conduct; to enter upon a changed life. 
When the liar ceases his lying and be- 
comes truthful, it may be said that he has 
been converted from a lying habit. When 
a slanderer ceases his habit of slandering, 
and becomes generous in his thought and 
in his speech, he may be said to be con- 
verted from his slandering habit. And so 
of any other sin or vice, to be converted 
from it is to cease the evil practice and 

(48) 



Regeneration — Conversion, 49 

act honorably and circumspectly before the 
world. 

The regenerated soul is born of God. The 
Holy Spirit has come to it and imparted to 
it a new life, so that it has become "a new 
creature," a "new creation." It is not the 
same soul it was before. It received a new 
element which has affected it in every fiber 
of its being. The renewal has been accom- 
plished once for all, and the new creature 
is immortal life. It is of God, and the sub- 
ject of it has been made "partaker of the 
divine nature." God in Christ has become 
the life of the soul, so that it can not be- 
come again what it was before. At the 
beginning it is an infantile life, and needs 
care and culture that it may the more 
speedily develop into strength and activity. 
Neglected, it is stunted and dwarfed in its 
infancy, and may fail for years to manifest 
itself. But being immortal, the life does 
not go out; there is no death for it, but a 
favorable incident, a day of deliverance 
from the overlying burden, and it springs 
into activity and develops the faculties 
inherent in the divine life. 

The regenerated soul may need conver- 
sion, though it ought not to need it. Peter, 
when he became timorous and denied a 
knowledge of the Lord Jesus, needed con- 
version; and when the conversion occurred 
(5) 



50 Theology for Plain People. 

he was able to strengthen his brethren, by 
his advice as well as by his example. He 
needed conversion a second time, when he 
dissembled and refused to eat with Gen- 
tiles, because certain brethren of "the cir- 
cumcision" were liable to tell them of Je- 
rusalem what they had seen him do. So 
a great many regenerated Christians are 
liable to get out of the way, on the wrong 
road, and need to be turned back, con- 
verted. 

But while this is true, and while conver- 
sion may be a frequent occurrence in the 
life of the saint, the probabilities are on the 
other side. Conversion may be taken for 
regeneration, and the "convert" may be 
simply temporarily reformed, soon to go 
back to his old place, his old habits, his old 
life. And so conversion has been mistaken 
for regeneration in untold instances. 

We do not condemn the use of the word 
"conversion" to signify "regeneration," or 
what we trust is regeneration. Perhaps we 
ought to use it, because we can not be sure 
of the deeper and vital work of the Spirit; 
but we should not be satisfied with simply 
the evidence of conversion, but should so 
present truth, so hold forth the Word of 
Life that those who hear may truly and 
fully repent of their sins and mourn their 
sinfulness, thus insuring a converted life. 



Regeneration — Conversion. 51 

In far too many instances conversion is 
taken to mean regeneration, and we en- 
courage the converted to believe that he 
has experienced the latter when he has only 
determined upon the former. It is just 
here that the professed Christian has occa- 
sion for repeated self-examination. He 
knows that he is not all 'that he ought to 
be, and frequently he knows that he is 
living in sin, as though he had never ex- 
perienced the passage from death to life. 
He tries to reform, and does reform, for 
a time; but the time of reformation is 
short, and he relapses into the same old 
ways, or similar ways. Is it possible that 
he has really been regenerated, made a new 
creature in Christ Jesus? The only evi- 
dence of regeneration is found in the con- 
verted life; if that fails, there is reason 
to fear that there is no life there. 

Conversion is not saving. It is external, 
temporal, possibly temporary. A drunkard 
may be converted, and abstain from drink 
for months and years, and even then go 
back again to his cups, the last state worse 
than the first. He was converted, not re- 
generated. The reformation was in the 
outer life, not in the soul. A temperance 
orator, like John B. Gough, can make con- 
verts, but it is beyond the power of the 



52 Theology for Plain People. 

orator to effect regeneration. Evangelists 
may count "converts" by the hundreds or 
the thousands, but they are "converts," and 
not saints. They have been converted tem- 
porarily, and may "run" for a few months, 
but they will surely fail before the end of 
the race is reached. So Jesus said well, 
"He that endureth to the end, the same 
shall be saved." The word was spoken for 
us, to give us pause in our hasty conclu- 
sion that, because a soul seems to be con- 
verted, it is therefore regenerated. 



SANCTIFICATION— JUSTIFICATION. 



Not a few who read 1 Corinthians vi. 2 
are puzzled because the apostle puts sanc- 
tification before justification — "But ye are 
washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and 
by the Spirit of our God." It is quite cus- 
tomary to put justification before sancti- 
fication, and say that sanctification is a 
progressive work effected in the soul of 
the believer and manifested in a life of in- 
creasing holiness and of loving obedience 
to the will of God. On the other hand, 
there are those who regard sanctification 
as a work wrought in the soul by reason 
of which it becomes not. only freed from 
sin, but sinless, no longer liable to commit 
sin, immune to temptation, and free from 
the being of sin, or what others would call 
"indwelling sin." It is not uncommon to 
meet with persons, doubtless honest and 
sincere, who imagine that they have 
reached a state of "sinless perfection," or 
"entire sanctification." We can not accept 
their view, and do not see evidence of its 
correctness in their practice. 



54 Theology for Plain People. 

The literal meaning of the word "sanc- 
tify" is to make sacred, to transmute what 
is common to a sacred use. In another 
phrase, it is to make holy. And the phrase 
implies that what is made holy was not 
so before, but was made so, either by the 
will of man or by the will of God. All 
through the Old Testament we find the 
word used to signify a dedication to God, 
or to a sacred use. It is first used in Exo- 
dus xiii. 2, where it is commanded that 
"all the firstborn shall be sanctified to 
God." In Exodus xix. 10 Moses was com- 
manded to go and sanctify the people; and 
he did it. It is also said, "Let the priests 
sanctify themselves" ; and Moses was com- 
manded to set bounds about Mount Sinai 
to sanctify it. But the sanctification, of 
that day, though performed by Moses, was 
not enduring; there was need that it be re- 
peated. Some time after (Ex. xxviii. 41) 
it is commanded, "Thou shalt put them 
(the holy garments) upon Aaron thy broth- 
er, and upon his sons with him, and shalt 
anoint them, and consecrate them and sanc- 
tify them, that they may minister unto me 
in the priest's office." It is evident that the 
consecration and the sanctification were 
closely associated and partook each of the 
nature of the other. What is consecrated 



Sanctification — Justification. 65 

is set apart to a particular use, and from 
the moment of consecration it is un- 
lawful to use it in any other way, or for 
any other purpose than that to which it 
was consecrated. Thus the tabernacle was 
sanctified, the altar was sanctified, and Je- 
hovah says to Israel, "I am the Lord 
that doth sanctify you." In Lev. xi. 44 
it is said to the people, "Ye shall sanctify 
yourselves," and in Lev. xxi. 23 it is said: 
"I the Lord do sanctify them." So the 
Sabbath was sanctified; the first born of 
males among men and brutes was sancti- 
fied. So Jehovah said to Joshua, "Up, sanc- 
tify the people and say, Sanctify your- 
selves. " Samuel "sanctified Jesse and his 
sons." Nehemiah built and sanctified the 
sheep gate of Jerusalem. Job sanctified his 
sons and his daughters. 

Coming to the New Testament we find 
similar usage. Jesus prayed that his dis- 
ciples might be sanctified, and declared that 
for their sakes he sanctified himself to the 
cross. Paul prayed for the believing Thes- 
salonians that the God of peace might sanc- 
tify them wholly. Jesus declared of him- 
self that the Father had sanctified him 
and sent him into the world (John x. 26). 
The unbelieving husband may be sancti- 
fied by the believing wife, and the unbe- 



56 Theology for Plain People. 

lieving wife may be sanctified by the be- 
lieving husband. That is, either is sepa- 
rated from common things by virtue of the 
relation of the other to the Lord Jesus. 
And it is said of the Lord Jesus that "by 
one offering he has perfected forever them 
that are sanctified." 

Sanctification, then, in its first and prime 
sense, is a setting apart from a common to 
a specific use, and in the case of the Chris- 
tian it is nis setting apart from the service 
of sin to the service of God. It is safe to 
say that there is no such thing as an un- 
sanctified Christian. Paul called all the 
believers saints, and such they were, be- 
cause they had been sanctified. [The word 
saint means something sanctified, sainted.] 
In order to justification, there must be, 
first, sanctification. The sinner, conscious 
of his guilt and the justness of his con- 
demnation, is brought face to face with 
the Lord Jesus and his cross. In despair 
of salvation by any other means, he finally 
yields and accepts the mastership of Je- 
sus. Oftentimes the struggle is fierce and 
long-continued. It is a question of yield- 
ing or not yielding. This Jesus must be 
taken as Lord as well as Christ, and the 
convicted sinner finally accepts the condi- 
tions — he yields to Christ; takes him as 



Sanctification — Justification. 57 

Lord; consecrates himself to the service of 
his captor; sanctifies himself to the ser- 
vice of the Lord Christ. Is he sanctified? 
Yes, assuredly. It is just there that his 
sanctification begins, and for the secure- 
ment of his salvation it is complete. It 
is a surrender of body, mind, soul and 
spirit to Christ. Only when it is thus, can 
Christ become the Savior of the soul. Sanc- 
tification, then, begins just where and when 
the convicted sinner gives himself up to 
Christ, to be ruled by him — to be his 
"slave, as Paul declared himself to be. 

It is not a state of personal sinlessness. 
"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal 
bodies," said Paul. "If we say we have no 
sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is 
not in us," said John. There can be no 
justification unless there has been first a 
sanctification. From the hour of his sub- 
mission to Christ the believer is sanctified. 

But, as in the case of Old Testament 
saints, and, as is painfully evident in the 
New Testament saints, there is need of 
a frequent repetition of the sanctification. 
Perhaps it ought not to be said that no 
redeemed sinner ever yet reached the place, 
in this world, where he became fully and 
completely and unswervingly sanctified. 
We may not know what another has 



58 Theology for Plain People. 

achieved, except by external signs. We 
may not correctly judge all the signs. But 
we do know of a surety that many who 
profess perfect and entire sanctification 
come very far short of illustrating the fact 
of such sanctification. And yet, we say 
that without entire sanctification, the soul 
can not enter into Christ and eternal life. 

How do we reconcile these two facts? 
We do it by accepting the evidence that 
human nature is subject to human weak- 
nesses, and that lack of stability is, alas, 
too evident in us all. What we promise 
we do not perform; the pledge we make we 
do not abide by — do not adhere to. We 
once sanctified ourselves, but we have sin- 
ned, and we need to renew the sanctifica- 
tion. It is for this that we seek the place 
of prayer, and observe the hour of prayer. 
It may be said that only the sanctified 
suppliant receives answer to prayer. Not 
until the soul surrenders is the prayer 
heard. Only then can the answer come. 
Only then can sin be forgiven. 

But we bless God that justification is 
thus allied to sanctification. Sanctification 
is ours, justification is God's. When the 
sinner sanctifies himself, our God and 
Savior justifies him. As the sanctification 
is the setting apart from a common to a 



Sanctification — Justification. 59 

holy use, so justification is a making or 
counting righteous that which before was 
sinful. The humble, sanctified suppliant 
is immediately justified. His sins are for- 
given, though they may have been many, 
and though the prayer has been repeated a 
thousand times, ten thousand times. In 
nothing does our God delight more than 
in forgiving sin. By his forgiving grace 
would he be known to us. And every act 
of forgiveness is an act of justification. It 
pronounces the sinner just, free from sin 
and from the guilt of sin. He is no more 
a sinner than though he had never 
sinned. "Forgiving iniquity and transgres- 
sion and sin," he was the God whom Moses 
heard. Only the sanctified sinner is the 
justified sinner; only the justified sinner 
is the forgiven sinner. 

We have said that an apparent object 
of those who are cutting and trimming 
cur Bible, a la Clarke and Foster, is to 
make it more palatable to the objector and 
unbeliever. They make themselves believe 
that, as matters stand, the Bible being re- 
garded as the infallible word of God, the 
unbeliever has some kind of justification 
for his unbelief; the Bible, as it stands, 
asks too much of him. Something must 



60 Theology for Plain People. 

be done to make it easier for him to accept 
Christianity as a religious system. And 
so they go to work to whittle away the 
miracles and everything which demands 
faith, and an acceptance of the Most High 
God as the author and finisher of the plan 
of salvation. We are told that something 
similar is going on in India, where Hindu- 
ism and Mohammedanism are making 
large demands upon the credulity of their 
devotees, while it is demanded that Chris- 
tianity shall apologize for its intrusion 
into the field of religion. An editorial in 
the Baptist Missionary Review, published 
in Madras, says: "Here in India it seems 
to be coming to pass that almost the only 
thing for which an apology is expected is 
for being a Christian. The Mohammedan 
offers no apology for his religious faith, 
nor does the Hindu, the Parsi or the 
Buddhist; nor will any of them consent 
to be shoved into some quiet corner where 
their religious performances will not dis- 
turb others. It is the Christian who 
must not obstruct the public highway or 
stir up the opposition of other religion- 
ists." And, as things are going, it may be 
expected that something similar, only in a 
more covert way, will yet influence public 



Sanctification — Justification. 61 

opinion in "Christian America/' The man 
who stands by the religion of the Bible 
must submit to being regarded as "a back 
number" lingering on the stage when he 
ought to Lave got out of the way. 



JUSTIFICATION—HOW EFFECTED. 



Perhaps there is no doctrine of the Bible 
so difficult to understand or over which so 
many people stumble as the doctrine of 
justification, as taught in the New Testa- 
ment. A year ago a noted teacher was try- 
ing to illustrate the doctrine, and he took 
the case of the French officer, Dreifus, 
who, having been tried for treason against 
his country and convicted, had been par- 
doned, though not restored to his former 
rank in the army. It was said that Dreifus 
was not satisfied with what had been done 
in setting him at liberty, but was seeking a 
new trial with the expectation of proving 
himself innocent, in order that he might 
be restored; and it was said, "What Drei- 
fus then wanted was justification." The 
teacher utterly misconceived the nature of 
justification, as it is taught in the New Tes- 
tament. 

The truth is that what the Frenchman 
had already received was a partial justifi- 
tion, and what he was trying to obtain was 
a judgment of innocence. He was unwillixig 

(62 



Justification — How Effected,. 63 

to be regarded as having sinned. He was 
unwilling to be pardoned, and demanded 
that he be declared innocent. And this 
he has finally succeeded in securing — a ver- 
dict of innocence. In this respect he 
was in the attitude of the great mass of 
humanity. "Being ignorant of God's right- 
eousness, and going about to establish their 
own righteousness, they have not submitted 
themselves to the righteousness of God." 
They are unwilling to admit that sin has 
effected their condemnation, and that the 
only thing they can hope for is pardon, 
forgiveness. When pressed, they admit 
that they are sinners ("All are sinners"), 
but then their sins are so small, so easily 
committed, that it will be easy to commit 
some good act, or acts, to compensate for 
them, and so the account will be balanced; 
or, at most, a few years or hours of purga- 
tion, after death, will suffice to make it 
all right. This is the state of mind of the 
great mass of humanity, even when taught 
otherwise by the Word of God, and when 
God's righteousness is illustrated before 
them in the person and work of the Lord 
Jesus Christ 

He who is innocent can not be justified. 
He who has not sinned can not be per- 
suaded to accept justification. It Is the 



64 Theology for Plain People. 

sinner who must be justified, not the 
righteous. When the righteous man is ac- 
cused and brought to trial, he protests his 
innocence, and continues to protest, no 
matter what witnesses and juries and 
judges may say. The "friends" of Job 
could never persuade him to acknowledge 
that he had been guilty of some great sin, 
and therefore his afflictions. From first 
to last he declared his innocence. The 
Lord Jesus could look into the faces of 
his enemies and say: "Which of you con- 
vinceth (convicteth) me of sin?" He could 
declare that in all things he had done pre- 
cisely the will of his Father. Yet he suf- 
fered. Jesus could not be justified. He 
was innocent. His righteousness was his 
own. It was not the righteousness which 
God bestows upon a guilty, but repentant 
sinner who implores his forgiveness. Not 
until the sinner acknowledges his guilt, and 
asks forgiveness, can he be justified. To 
justify is to declare righteous, to treat the 
guilty as though he had never sinned. The 
"righteousness of God" is that which he 
himself provides for the sinner, and puts 
upon him at the moment of confession of 
sin and acceptance of Jesus Chirst as his 
Savior. At that moment the righteousness 
of Christ ("God's righteousness") becomes 



Justification — How Effected. 65 

the righteousness of the believer, and he is, 
from that day onward, a justified saint. 
From that moment he thinks and talks of 
"grace." He has received grace. By grace 
he is saved. Not "free grace"; that is 
tautology. Grace is always "something for 
nothing." It is free, only in the sense that 
it is bestowed without merit on the part 
of the recipient — "without money and with- 
out price." 

The righteous can never repent. He has 
nothing to repent of. He has done no 
wrong. In his heart there is no guile. He 
is pure as God himself is pure. To accuse 
him of wrong is a heinous offense. An ac- 
cusation against a righteous person is a 
sin which puts the accuser in a state of 
condemnation and death. But, as the 
righteous can never be made a sinner, so 
the sinner can never be made righteous, on 
his own account. A broken mirror can 
never be mended so that it shall be the 
same as before. A sinner can never be as 
though he had not sinned, had not been 
a sinner. Once a sinner, always a sinner. 
But "the righteousness of God" is a pro- 
vision by which the sinner may become 
what he was not before, and. what no 
righteous being could ever become — a re- 
deemed, a regenerated, a saved soul, saved 

(6) 



66 Theology for Plain People. 

in God's way, by God's grace. Only when 
the sinner becomes willing to declare him- 
self a sinner, pleads for forgiveness, and 
comes to God in the name of Jesus, can 
he be justified. 

"The grace of God which bringeth salva- 
tion" has been exercised toward sinners, 
and so the foundation of God's method of 
saving souls has been permanently laid, 
and is now accessible to all who will resort 
to it. Only two things are needful for him 
who would rest upon it. The first of these 
is repentance. This is fundamental. The 
sinner must come, not as Dreifus, declar- 
ing his innocence. He must not continue 
to declare that he has not sinned. He must 
not claim that his condemnation is unjust, 
undeserved. He must confess his guilt, and 
must recognize himself as a justly con- 
demned sinner. The second thing needful 
is a recognition of "God's righteousness," 
namely Jesus Christ, the crucified, as his 
hope, his Savior. As a sinner, standing 
alone before the bar of God, there can be 
no ground of hope for him. Repentance 
does not save him. Repentance can not 
make good the violated law. Repentance 
does not restore the broken mirror. Re- 
pentance does not insure against a relapse 
into sin. "The righteousness of God" must 



Justification — How Effected. G7 

come into the life of the repentant sinner 
before he can be justified. And this 
"righteousness of God" is "The Lord our 
righteousness." He is God's righteousness, 
because God has provided him for us; and 
he is our righteousness, because we accept 
him as a substitute for the righteousness 
which we so conspicuously lack. It is when 
God's righteousness becomes our righteous- 
ness that there is peace in the soul. Then 
God and the sinner are reconciled. 

And it is here that faith comes in. When 
the sinner, despairing of salvation by his 
own righteousness, comes to a recognition 
of God's righteousness, he no longer stands 
off, demanding acquittal. His conscience 
harmonizes with the provision of grace, and 
he casts himself into the arms of mercy, 
accepting forgiveness, giving himself up to 
One whom, before, he has rejected and de- 
nied. At the same moment a great change 
takes place within him; the Holy Spirit, He 
by whom he has been brought up to the 
point where he is willing to be justified, 
saved by grace, works a mighty change in 
the soul; it is his regeneration. Now he is 
" a new creature." Now "old things have 
passed away, and all things have become 
new." Now, having submitted himself to 
the righteousness of God, he is justified, de- 



68 Theology for Plain People. 

Glared just. He fully meets God's require- 
ment. He is just, in the sight of a holy 
God. "It is God that justifieth; who is he 
that condemneth?" "Who shall lay any- 
thing to the charge of God's elect?" By 
regeneration the sinner is made "a new 
creation," and he has become what he was 
not, until now — a child of God. Now hie 
future is assured. Weak, liable to tempta- 
tion and to yield, mayhap, to temptation; 
yet a child of God, an heir of eternal life, 
a joint-heir with Jesus his Righteousness. 
Now sin may do much mischief, but it is 
sin that does it, not the redeemed, regen- 
erated soul. Now there is no condemnation 
for him. He is in Christ Jesus, and is se- 
cure. 

And all this comes by "faith." It is the 
result of belief in the justness of the con- 
demnation; then in God's word of prom- 
ise; then in Christ Jesus, as God's 
righteousness. And, "being justified by 
faith, we have peace with God, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have 
received the atonement." 



FREEWILL— PREDESTINATION. 

They seem to be opposite poles; and so, 
strictly, they are. If one is north, the 
other is south. But as south implies a 
north, and as north implies a south, in and 
for the same object, so freewill and predes- 
tination imply an intermediate body to 
which both belong and of which both are 
true. 

No student of human nature doubts that 
man is endowed with free will. Every hu- 
man soul is conscious that he moves and 
acts by the exercise of his own will. The 
Bible teaches free will. It throws upon 
the individual man the responsibility for 
his conduct. Even though a man be 
tempted and led astray by another, he is 
held responsible for yielding to the tempter, 
for following the lead of a decoyer. Though 
jealousy and resentment caused Cain to kill 
his brother, the murderer was held respon- 
sible for his act. And though Adam sought 
to throw responsibility for his sin upon his 
wife, he was not excused, but was made to 
suffer the penalty of his own sin. So all 
through the Bible, men and women are held 
(69) 



70 Theology for Plain People. 

responsible for their acts, and personal ac- 
countability is taught from Genesis to Rev- 
elation. 

On the other hand, it is evident to every 
student of history, and to every thoughtful 
mind, that he who made the world has a 
plan and purpose in it. Nothing comes by 
chance. It has been said that "every hu- 
man life is a plan of God." We can not 
read the promises of God and accept them 
without believing that he is going to ac- 
complish a purpose — a definite, fixed pur- 
pose — and that every event, however sig- 
nificant, or insignificant, has its place in 
the fulfillment of that purpose. He who 
made the insect which we brush from our 
faces made it for a purpose, and without it 
his plan would not be perfect, his purpose 
would fail of accomplishment. So the great 
events, interlocked and intertwined as they 
are with innumerable less notable events, 
are essential to the development and ac- 
complishment of the divine plan. 

If, then, Jehovah, our God, has a plan 
and is going to accomplish that plan, it 
follows that every event, great or small, 
must fit into that plan, and must be reck- 
oned with in the execution of that plan. 
It can not be that our God has made this 
great universe and all its contents and then 



Freewill — Predestination. 71 

gone off and left it to take care of itself. 
It must be that he who delights in the 
work of his hands, and who in the be- 
ginning, pronounced it all "very good," 
must constantly dwell with it and watch 
over it. He must know it in all its details, 
its little as well as its big features, and 
must be present, overruling and guiding 
everything to the fulfillment of his purpose. 
We have only to stop for a few moments 
and think on these things, that we may 
get them fixed in our hearts and that they 
may enter into our thinking, in order to 
become established in the conviction that 
"known unto God are all his works from 
the beginning of the world," and that his 
knowledge extends not simply to the great 
events, and great objects, such as planets 
and stars, but to the minutiae of those 
worlds. There has been much discussion, 
of late ; as to whether God is not the 
substance of everything in his universe; 
whether there is anything which is not 
identified with the personality of God, so 
that it can be said that there is only one 
substance, namely, God. We do not all ac- 
cept that view of it; but we hold that there 
is nothing in the universe that is not known 
to God, nor does anything occur without 
him. 



72 Theology for Plain People. 

We could easily understand how it would 
be possible for God to overrule and control 
all events, provided he had nothing to do 
bu+, as it were, turn the wheel of a great 
machine. If he had to deal only with ma- 
terial things, and if everything were to lie 
still just where he placed it until he chose 
to take it up again; if there were no liv- 
ing, moving beings in the universe. But 
the marvel is that God controls events, not- 
witstanding the active, self-moving things 
which he has made to act freely, and many 
of them acting in antagonism to his au- 
thority and purpose. How is it possible for 
a human soul to be free, to act according 
to changeful impulses, as well as from 
mixed purposes, and yet for God to direct 
all the movements of that individual and 
put him in a designed place, performing a 
designed act, at a designed time, and to 
finish his movements here at the time ap- 
pointed? That is what amazes us. That is 
what we can not understand. But then 
we daily come in contact with things which 
we do not, and can not, understand. There 
are problems which we can not solve. Once 
we could not solve the problem, "How is it 
that two and two make four?" Now only 
a few of us can solve the problem of an 
eclipse of the sun or of the moon. Only 



Freewill — Predestination. 73 

a few of us could determine the exact height 
of a building, of a mountain, or the distance 
to the moon, without measuring. Now we 
know that some of us can determine all 
these things, by a few simple rules. 

There are those among us who can not 
believe it possible that God knows to-day- 
just what we will be doing to-morrow, just 
what thoughts will come into our minds, 
just how we will be affected by each pass- 
ing event. There are those who do not 
believe that God takes account of every 
thought, every desire, every purpose, as well 
as of every act of every one of us. They 
think that to do so would be to make God 
little and petty, unfit to manage the great 
affairs of his universe. But others of us 
see that the greatness of God is to be 
recognized in his regard for the little things 
as truly as in his management of the great 
things. When we stop and think of it, we 
are compelled to believe that not a pulsa- 
tion of our hearts takes place without God. 
Our prayers and our trust are founded 
upon this conviction — though we are prone 
to forget it — that while we are praying for 
something we want and is dear to us, 
another is praying for a similar or 
the same thing, and is expecting the 
same God to do for him what we 



74 Theology for Plain People. 

expect him to do for us. Not infre- 
quently two persons, with trustful hearts, 
'are praying on opposite sides of the same 
object; one wants it this way, and the other 
wants it directly different. And yet our 
God hears and answers prayer. He loves 
and promotes the welfare of every soul that 
trusts in him and seeks his face. 

There are those among us who delight in 
the thought that God knows them by their 
names — possibly names which he himself 
has given them — "new" names, written in 
his book. They are glad when they lie 
down to sleep that their God watches over 
them as though they were each the only 
sleeper in his universe. And these same 
persons are glad, when they wake in the 
morning and go out about the work of the 
day, that they are to have divine guidance 
and care all through the day. They can 
do better work with this thought in mind. 
They would not have it otherwise. They 
love God and love to think that he is near 
them, and that they are dear to him. So 
they meet disappointments and sorrows 
with composure, because they feel sure that 
their Father knows it all, directs in it all, 
really does it all. 

But all this means predestination. It 
means that God has a plan for human life, 



Freewill — Predestination. 75 

and that he is especially concerned for the 
welfare of his own. Paul got it right. He 
thought deeper and more logically than did 
any other of his age, not excepting Peter, 
who caught a glimpse of the same great 
truth. Several chapters of the letter to 
the Romans are devoted to a discussion of 
this great subject, and especially the eighth 
and the ninth chapters tell us what is the 
result of God's purposing, so far as his peo- 
ple are concerned, and so far as concerns 
those who will not have him to be their 
Sovereign; who will not accept him whom 
the Father has sanctified and sent into the 
world to be the Savior of all them who be- 
lieve. The eighth chapter of Romans es- 
pecially tells us what is the estate of him 
who makes the Lord Jesus his own, and 
trusts him for salvation. Such persons do 
not deny that they are possessed of free 
will. They know that they act freely; but 
they also know that what they are is due 
to God, who works in them "to will and 
to do of his good pleasure." They know 
that the work of grace was begun in their 
souls by the free action of the Holy Spirit, 
and they know also that now they are "kept 
by the power of God through faith unto 
salvation ready to be revealed in the last 
time." 



76 Theology for Plain People. 

Here are together a hundred Christian 
men and women, of different temperaments, 
with different worldly interests, these in- 
terests often seeming to clash with each 
other; men and women subject to many 
human infirmities, to temptations within 
and fightings without; and yet all of them 
foreordained to be conformed to the image 
of the Son of God — called, justified and 
glorified; all because he who has begun a 
good work in them will perform it unto the 
day of Jesus Christ. All are endowed with 
free will, and yet all are constrained by 
the power of God. 

Here is a mystery, but here also is a great 
fact. We are delighted to accept the fact; 
shall we contend against the truth that 
all this is the result of predestination, a 
predetermination of God to save out of the 
world those whom he has set his love upon, 
and has known from the foundation of the 
world? There is no antagonism between 
freewill and predestination. Both are har- 
monized in the bosom of God. They meet 
in infinity. 



THE PERSEVERANCE OP THE SAINTS. 



Of "the saints'* it is said. The fact of 
perseverance turns on that. Then the ques- 
tion arises, "What is it to he a saint?" 
"What kind of people are saints ?" There 
are those who talk about "Saint Matthew," 
"Saint Luke," "Saint Paul," "Saint John," 
Saint Peter." Others talk of "Saint Je- 
rome," "Saint Chrysostom," "Saint Clem- 
ent," "Saint Augustine"; and still others 
talk of "Saint Mary," "Saint Xavier," "Saint 
Francis," "Saint Cecilia," "Saint Agatha," 
"Saint Gregory," "Saint Christopher Colum- 
bus." The Church of Rome has claimed 
the right to designate the saints, and not 
a few Protestants have been willing to ac- 
cept the dictum of "the Church." But those 
who study the Word of God for themselves 
fail to find any warrant for such distinc- 
tions as are made by churchmen, and a r e 
constrained to regard as a saint every true 
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, every 
one who has been truly sanctified by the 
Spirit of God in belief of the truth. 

The word "saint" is a shortened form of 
the word "sanctified," and the saint is he 
(77) 



78 Theology for Plain People. 

or she who is sanctified. What it is to be 
sanctified we have already seen, namely, a 
full committal of one's self to the Lord 
Christ, to be his and his only, for time 
and for eternity. The fact of such sancti- 
fication turns upon the other fact of re- 
generation, though both ideas are so closely 
joined that it is not easy to distinguish 
between them. It is sometimes said that 
sanctification and perseverance are the di- 
vine and the human sides of the same great 
fact; and yet, neither of them can exist 
without the other. Without the Holy Spirit 
there can be neither sanctification nor per- 
severance. The underlying fact is that of 
regeneration. The soul which has been re- 
generated has been "born of God," born 
of "the Spirit of life," and "the law of the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes free 
from the law of sin and death." It is not 
uncommon to hear, when one turns from 
sin, and professes faith in Christ, the decla- 
ration "Saved!" Sometimes we hear it ex- 
claimed, "Another soul saved," and yet, 
perhaps the same person will soon after 
talk about "falling from grace," by which 
is meant a return to the previous condition 
of alienation from God and forfeiture of 
eternal life. There is much confusion in 
many minds with regard to this subject. 



Perseverance of the Saints. 79 

It has been said that no soul can be re- 
generated without sanctification; that is, 
without a full surrender to Christ, a con- 
secration of itself to him who only is able 
to save. But when the soul is thus sancti- 
fied to Christ regeneration is sure. The 
Holy Spirit is there, enabling the soul to 
will and to do of the good pleasure of God. 
Regeneration is the impartation of a new 
life, and has been called "a new creation," 
as when it is said, "So then neither circum- 
cision availeth anything, nor uncircum- 
cision availeth anything, but a new crea- 
ture," or, literally, "a new creation." "Old 
things have passed away, and behold all 
things have become new." "If any man be 
in Christ, he is a new creature," or new 
creation. And yet, it is not so much a cre- 
ation as a begetting. It is God himself, 
by his Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised, 
entering into the soul of the believing, re- 
pentant sinner, and taking up his abode 
there. It is called a passage "from death 
to life." But of what great value is it, 
if it is only temporary, if the Holy Spirit 
is to take his departure just as soon as the 
weak saint falls into sin? If sinlessness 
is the condition of the Spirit's continuance 
in the soul, who can stand? What a mis- 
erable life must be led by him who regards 



80 Theology for Plain People. 

himself as walking as it were upon the 
edge of a razor, ready to topple off at any 
moment. That is -not the idea presented 
to us in the Word of God. 

Jesus spoke of his people as safe in him. 
He declared that to those who came to 
him he gave "eternal life," and said "they 
shall never perish; and no one shall snatch 
them out of my hand. My Father, who 
hath given them to me, is greater than all, 
and no one is able to snatch them out of 
the Father's hand." Jesus said of his dis- 
ciples, as he was about to leave them: 
"Holy Father, keep them in thy name 
whom thou hast given me." . . . "While I 
was with them I kept them in thy name 
. . . and not one of them perished." It is 
reasonable to suppose that Jesus is just 
as much concerned for those who believe on 
him to-day as he was for those who stood 
around him when he uttered the prayer. 
It is his desire, as it is to his honor, that 
he keep his redeemed ones, that the enemy 
may not point to them, as the heathen, did 
to the Jews in their captivity, and say: 
"These are the people of Jehovah, and they 
have gone forth out of his land." Those 
words were intended as a reproach on the 
religion which the Jews professed. They 
were meant for the disparagement of the 



Perseverance of the Saints. 81 

God of the Jews, as an evidence that the 
faith of the Jews was misplaced, whereas 
the trouble was that they lacked faith, 
and would not do what their God com- 
manded them to do, saying that it was "a 
weariness" and was useless, and something 
else would do just as well. If our Christ 
does not bring home at last every one of 
his redeemed, it is either because he can 
not do it, or because he is not true to his 
promise. We know that neither of these 
things is true of him. He can and he will. 
He who begins a good work in the soul of 
the believer will surely carry it on to the 
end. He knew the weakness of human na- 
ture when he began his work of redemp- 
tion. He is not surprised by the exhibitions 
of weakness and faltering and wayward- 
ness which he witnesses to-day. "He con- 
siders our frame, and he remembers that 
we are dust" 

The only question with him is as to the 
full surrender of the soul to him. The 
question for the doubting saint to ask is, 
"Have I really given myself up to Christ 
to be his and his only?" And he who 
doubts has this privilege still. He can say 
in his heart: "If I never before gave my- 
self up to Christ, I do it now and here." 
It is not needful to go back to the place 

(7) 



82 Theology for Plain People. 

of former beginning; it can be done at any 
moment with the full assurance that the 
surrender will be recognized and accepted. 
It is the perseverance of the saints which 
we are considering (and we might say, in- 
cidentally, that the perseverance of the 
non-saint is just as sure as is that of the 
saint, the one in one direction, the other 
in another). But we must not assume that 
the perseverance is by virtue of human 
ability, due to an inherent power in the 
soul itself, though the new and divine life 
is unquenchable. It is all because it is 
God who works in the soul of the redeemed 
"to will and to do of his good pleasure." 
It is his pleasure that all whom his Son 
Jesus has redeemed shall be kept by divine 
power, through faith unto salvation — a sal- 
vation which is to be fully revealed in the 
last time. That is to say: It is not for any 
person to know himself to be saved, as 
we know that we live here and know our 
surroundings. That is not the kind of 
knowledge vouchsafed to us. What we 
know is that we fully trust in Christ, and 
we can know that our salvation is in his 
hands, and we can know that he is able to 
keep us in the future as in the past, and 
that he will not fail to keep his promise. 
We can sing with confidence: 



Perseverance of the Sctints. 83 

"The soul that on Jesus has leaned for 

repose 
He will not, he will not desert to his foes. 
That soul, though all hell should endeavor 

to shake, 
He'll never, no, never, no never forsake." 

Every regenerated soul, we have said, is 
a sanctified soul, and is therefore a saintly 
soul, and every genuine Christian is a saint. 
So it is held, and with the authority of 
God's Word — the word of the Lord Jesus— 
every redeemed soul will be surely brought 
home to the abode of the saints, and it 
is our joy to think that, if he has not 
already done so, he will not fail to make 
us "fit to be partakers of the inheritance 
of the saints in light." The processes by 
which he carries on his work in us are 
varied and often mysterious; but they are 
effective. Because of our different tem- 
peraments and selfishness, what is effective 
in one instance may not avail in another. 
The Captain of our salvation was made per- 
fect through suffering, in order that he 
might not only redeem us, but that he 
might be to us an example of patience and 
perseverance. He knew well what he was 
to endure, and yet, "for the joy that was 
set before him, he endured the cross, 
despising the shame, knowing well that in 



84 Theology for Plain People. 

the end he would sit down at the right 
hand of the majesty on high, having put 
all enemies under his feet. And it is said 
to us: "Consider him who endured such 
gainsaying of sinners against himself, that 
ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls." 
He knows the ways that we take, and he 
is prepared to meet us in whatever way; 
and, if we allow him (as the regenerated 
surely will), he will conduct us home. All 
turns, let us say again, on whether we have 
been truly born of God. On that great fact 
depends the question of "the final perse- 
verance of the saints." The saints perse- 
vere, because they are born of God. 



THE RESURRECTION BODY. 



Nothing is taught more distinctly and 
plainly, in the New Testament, than that 
the dead shall be raised and shall he con- 
scious of life as well as of the scenes 
around them. The ancient Greeks and 
Romans, as well as other heathen peoples, 
believed in a future life, a continued con- 
sciousness after death. They held that 
the soul, or spirit, or shade, could exist 
without the body, and they conceived an 
"underworld," where disembodied spirits 
associated together, one class separated 
from another, the good and the bad 
dwelling apart. Of course, having nothing 
beside their reasoning and imagination to 
found such a theory upon, there was wide 
difference of opinion among them as to 
just what and where the future life was 
to be lived. They had no conception of a 
reunion of soul and body, nor did they 
have clear views as to eternity, though 
they had words to express it. 

Christianity, the New Testament, on the 
other hand, teaches distinctly that there 
shall be a resurrection of the dead, "both 
(85) 



86 Theology for Plain People. 

of the just and of the unjust." Jesus 
taught it when he declared that "in the 
resurrection" there is "neither marriage 
nor giving in marriage." He taught it 
also when he spoke of his disciples as sit- 
ting "upon thrones, judging the tribes of 
Israel." He taught it distinctly and ex- 
plicitly when (John v. 25), he said: "The 
hour cometh and now is when the dead 
shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they who hear shall live." 

The resurrection of the dead was a very 
prominent feature of Paul's preaching and 
teaching. As a Pharisee he had adopted 
the view held by his sect; and as a Chris- 
tian he had become thoroughly convinced 
of it, fully believing that the Lord Jesus 
had risen from the dead, and that he was 
simply the first-fruit of a great salvation 
furnished in his own blood and made ef- 
fectual by his Spirit. It was his declara- 
tion of this conviction that created the 
great disturbance in the temple when he 
was arrested and placed on trial for her- 
esy. It was his challenge to Agrippa, 
when he asked the king: "Why is it 
judged incredible with >ou, if God doth 
raise the dead?" 

But the New Testament, especially in the 
writings of Paul, makes a distinction be- 



The Resurrection Body. 87 

tween those who die "in Christ" and those 
who die in their sins. While both the 
just and the unjust shall be raised from 
the dead, the condition and expectation of 
the two classes are quite dissimilar. The 
one class is to be raised to a new and 
joyous life, the other to "shame and ever- 
lasting contempt." Those of one class will 
hail with delight the coming of their Lord 
and the assurance that, being "blessed of 
the Father," they shall inherit "the king- 
dom prepared for them before the founda- 
tion of the world." Those of the other class 
will awake in terror to hear the com- 
mand: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
his angels." Paul expressly declares that 
joy in the resurrection is to be experienced 
only by those who make Christ their por- 
tion in this life. "For if we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
also that sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him." "The dead iu Christ shall 
rise first." 

Moreover, the New Testament teaches 
that there shall be a resurrection of the 
bodies of those who die "in the Lord." 
Just what kind of body that of the resur- 
rection will be is not clearly defined. What 
we know is that there will be an intimate 



88 Theology for Plain People. 

and essential relation between the body 
laid in the grave and the "body that shall 
be." It is not to be presumed that every 
emaciated, decrepit, malformed, miserable 
body dissolved by death and the grave will 
be raised in the same identical form and 
composed of the same ideDtical elements 
arranged in the same order as when death 
came to it. Such a resurrection would be 
quite undesirable. Paul, who had re- 
ceived fuller instruction in the things of 
God than had any other man of his time, 
expressly declares that the body laid in 
the grave is not the body that is to come 
forth from the grave. The one is essen- 
tially the other, having a distinct person- 
ality. But they are not identical. The ar- 
gument of 1 Cor. xv. 35-54, while it justi- 
fies the hope of the resurrection of the body, 
insists that the body raised is not identical 
with the body put off in death. Paul tells 
us that "all flesh is not the same flesh," 
neither are all the heavenly bodies of the 
same substance. There is a flesh of beasts, 
another of fishes and another of birds. 
There are terrestial bodies and bodies ce- 
lestial. What we lay in the grave is not 
the body which will come forth, any more 
than the seed sown in the ground is identi- 
cal with the plant which springs from it. 



The Resurrection Body. 89 

The seed is essential to the plant, but it 
is not the plant. So what we lay in the 
grave is a fleshly body, but that which 
shall come forth is a spiritual body. "So 
is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown 
in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; 
it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in 
glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised 
in power; it is sown a natural body; it is 
raised a spiritual body." The natural 
comes first, and is essential to the spir- 
itual. "As we have borne the image of 
the earthy, we shall also bear the image 
of the heavenly." 

If it is said that the body of Jesus, when 
raised from the tomb, was identical with 
that which was laid in the tomb, we an- 
swer that while it is true that the tomb 
was empty, it is also true that the body 
with which our Lord clothed himself dif- 
fered widely from that which he inhabited 
before his death. First of all, the gar- 
ments worn by him before his death were 
divided among the soldiers, and only the 
winding sheet furnished by Nicodemus 
came out of the grave. Yet Jesus seemed 
to wear clothes of the fashion of the times, 
after his resurrection. True, he walked 
with his disciples on the way to Emmaus; 
but he did not walk back to Jerusalem 



90 Theology for Plain People. 

with them. "He vanished out of their 
sight" and afterwards entered the room in 
which the disciples were assembled, though 
the doors were closed and fastened, "for 
fear of the Jews." And after eating the 
piece of fish and the honey, he went out 
as he had come in, opening no door. Be- 
fore his resurrection Jesus needed food 
and shelter as other men did; but after 
his resurrection he needed neither food 
nor shelter. He went and came as seemed 
good to himself, and was here and there in 
a twinkling. So the bodies of his people 
are to be fashioned "like unto his glorious 
body." His resurrection life was not at 
all like his preresurrection life. So it will 
be with his people. It must not be for- 
gotten that "there is a natural body, and 
there is a spiritual body." What is the 
substance of the spiritual body we do not 
know, and can not know until we have 
received it. But it is the blessed hope of 
the saints of God that they are to receive 
such bodies, and that those bodies are im- 
mortal; that they are like unto the body of 
the Lord Jesus who at one time appeared 
as a majestic presence with "eyes like a 
flame of fire, his feet like unto burnished 
brass," and yet, in the midst of the throne 
and of the four living creatures and of the 



The Resurrection Body. 91 

eiders, he was "a lamb as it had been 
slain." It becomes us, therefore, to be 
very humble and teachable, when we come 
to speak of the resurrection body. It will 
be a wonderful thing, not definable in hu- 
man words. It will have marvelous pow- 
ers, capable of moving with marvelous 
rapidity, and in it the saint will be able 
to visit all parts of his Father's house and 
domain. "We that are in this tabernacle 
do groan being burdened, not because we 
would be unclothed, but clothed upon with 
our house which is from heaven." 



THE ISSUES OP "THAT DAY." 



It is sometimes said that it is "the day 
for which all other days are made." In 
the New Testament it is frequently spoken 
of as "that day," as in Luke x. 12: "It 
shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in that 
day, than for you"; Luke xxxi. 35: "But 
take heed to yourselves lest haply your 
hearts be overcharged . . . and that day 
come upon you suddenly as a snare"; 1 
Thess. v. 4: "But ye, brethren, are not in 
darkness, that that day should overtake you 
as a thief"; 2 Tim. i. 12: "I am persuaded 
that he is able to guard that which I have 
committed unto him against that day"; 
v. 18: "The Lord grant unto him to find 
mercy of the Lord in that day"; iv. 8: 
"The crown of righteousness which the 
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at 
that day." In other places it is called "the 
day of the Lord," as 1 Cor. i. 5: "That 
the spirit may be saved in the day of 
the Lord Jesus"; 2 Cor. i. 14: "We are 
your glorying, even as ye are also ours, 
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ"; 1 
(92) 



The Issues of That Day. 93 

Thess. v. 2: "The day of the Lord so com- 
eth as a thief in the night"; 2 Peter iii. 10: 
"But the day of the Lord will come as a 
thief." More frequently, however, it is 
called "the day of judgment," as Matt. x. 
15: "It shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of 
judgment than for that city"; Matt. xi. 22: 
"It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and 
Sidon in the day of judgment than for 
you"; 24: "It shall be more tolerable for 
the land of Sodom in the day of judgment 
than for thee"; xii. 36: "Every idle word 
that men shall speak, they shall give ac- 
count thereof in the day of judgment"; 
2 Peter ii. 9: "The Lord knoweth how 
... to keep the unrighteous under pun- 
ishment unto the day of judgment"; 1 John 
iv. 17: "That we may have boldness in the 
day of judgment." 

The Lord Jesus himself spoke specifically 
of a judgment day and how it shall be 
ordered. In Matt. xxv. 31-46 he tells us of 
that day when he "shall come in his 
glory"; when he shall "sit on the throne 
of his glory," and the nations shall be gath- 
ered before him. He thus tells us of a par- 
ticular day when (as it is said in Rev. xx. 
12) "the dead, the great and the small shall 
stand before the throne and the books shall 



94 Theology for Plain People. 

be opened, and "the dead" shall be "judged 
out of the things written in the books ac- 
cording to their works." At the same time 
another book is to be opened, and that is 
the book of life. Then, if any shall not be 
found written in the book of life, he shall 
be "cast into the lake of fire." So Jesus 
tells of that day, when he says that "the 
Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of 
his glory" and the nations shall be gath- 
ered before him and a separation shall 
take place, there being only two classes, 
and the issue shall be made on the ques- 
tion what is the relation of each to the 
Judge upon; the throne. 

It should be carefully observed that Jesus 
himself is the speaker, and he speaks of 
himself, "the Son of Man," as the Judge. 
In another place (John v. 22) he says that 
the Father judges no man, "but hath given 
all judgment to the Son." And he further 
says "that all men may honor the Son, even 
as they honor the Father. He that honor- 
eth not the Son honoreth not the Father 
that sent him." So, when he sits upon the 
throne of judgment, the question at issue 
is the relation of each individual to the 
Son of Man, the Lord of glory, to whom all 
judgment has been committed. 

It should be noted again that there are 



The Issues of That Day. 95 

only two classes, those on the right and 
those on the left. There are none who can 
be called "negatives" — neither good nor 
bad, only medium, half-and-half sort of 
people. "He that is not for us is against 
us," said Jesus, and "he that is not against 
us is for us." It must be one thing or the 
other. So now, at the judgment, no one is 
allowed to plead some goodness as a reason 
why he should be reckoned with neither the 
good nor the bad. 

It should be noticed also that the whole 
issue turns on the relation of the individual 
to the Judge. To the one class he says: 
"I was hungry and ye gave me meat," etc.; 
to the other class he says: "I was hungry 
and ye gave me no meat." He takes into 
account nothing else in the life and the 
character of the individual. All turns upon 
the one fact, or delinquency. The "right- 
eous" are surprised that they are said to 
have ministered to the Judge; for they do 
•not remember ever having seen him in 
need, and the same thing is true of the 
other class. Then the one class is told 
that the ministry was not to him personal- 
ly, but to his brethren; the other class is 
told that the failure was not in ministry 
to him personally, but to his "brethren." 
But who are his brethren? Assuredly, not 



Theology tor Plain People, 



everybody; not all men indiscriminately. 
We may think of the Judge as waving his 
hand or pointing towards those on his right 
hand — "These, my brethren." It is they to 
whom the reference is made. The question 
is, What is the esteem in which the breth- 
ren of Christ are held by those who are to 
be judged? John tells us that the test of 
our having passed from death to life is 
love for the brethren. If we love Christ, 
we love those who also love him. He who 
professes to love Christ and yet does not 
cherish in his heart a peculiar love for 
those who have been born of God, and 
have so become God's children, and con- 
sequently brethren of Jesus, has no right 
to regard himself as a Christian. This test 
is easily made and is applied more fre- 
quently than most of us are aware. It is 
present in the very first hour of the new- 
born soul. It is present in the heart at 
every subsequent step in life. He who pro- 
fesses to love all men alike, who talks of 
his love for his fellow-men, and knows no 
difference between those who love God and 
those who do not love him — how shall he 
prove that he is a child of God? The Judge, 
in that day, will not take a profession of 
love for humanity, love for "all men"— hu- 
man loves for kindred, the suffering, the 



The Issues of That Day. 97 

unfortunate, the distressed — and reckon it 
just as good as love for him and love for 
his "brethren." Ben Adhem's love for "his 
fellow-men" will not answer in the day of 
Christ. It is easy to see that, if love for 
humanity, love for man as man, love for 
kindred and neighbors — if such love is to 
be made availing in that day, there will 
be a scrambling over from the left hand 
to the right hand, and none will be left on 
the wrong side. Let it be distinctly under- 
stood, then, that the beneficence that de- 
cides the status of those brought to judg- 
ment is that bestowed upon Jesus Christ 
in his members, his people. "We know 
that we have passed from death to life, 
because we love the brethren" — not because 
we love everybody. 

Finally, the decision of that day will be 
final. There is not the least intimation 
that there is any middle ground, nor is 
there any intimation that there may be a 
change of state after the judgment has 
been pronounced. There is not in all the 
Word of God anything to justify the idea 
that the wicked are to be subjected to a 
purgatory in which they are to expiate 
their sins, and then, after a course of pro- 
bation and purifying, are to be reinstated 

(8) 



Theology for Plain People, 



to divine favor and admitted to the joys 
of the redeemed, the lovers of Jesus. There 
is no evidence of what is called "a second 
probation." All the eternal future is made 
to depend upon the one thing to be effected 
here, namely, love for or indifference to 
the Lord Jesus Christ. All turns upon that. 
The ungodly who stand upon the left hand, 
who can not say that they have ministered 
to Jesus by ministering to his brethren, 
"shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment." And that world everlasting (Greek 
aionion) means nothing less than eternal 
or unending. It is used with regard to the 
righteous as well as the wicked. If it 
means anything less than unending, then it 
is fair to believe that the blessed state of 
the "righteous" will come to an end. If 
Jesus did not mean to say that the? wicked 
would be punished forever, then he did not 
say that the righteous would be happy for- 
ever. The Greek had the idea of an un- 
ending existence, and they used the word 
aionios to express the idea. In Revelation 
xiv. 11 it is said of certain wicked ones that 
"the smoke of their torment goeth up for- 
ever and ever," and the word is the same 
used in Matt. xxv. 46. There can be no 
doubt that there are those who will suffer 



The Issues of That Day. 99 

as it is said in Revelation, in "the lake of 
fire," where the devil and the false prophets 
are, "and they shall be tormented day and 
night forever and ever." The place is said 
to have been prepared for the devil and his 
angels, the false prophet among them. 
"Then shall the righteous shine forth as 
the sun in the kingdom of their Father." 

lofc 



THE HEAVENLY WORLD. 



Where is it? What is it? These ques- 
tions are constantly recurring, and prob- 
ably only their stupendous significance 
hinders definite and satisfactory answers 
to them. The Bible, especially the New 
Testament, gives us hints and suggestions 
as to both what and where is the estate of 
the blessed. As to where it is, one or two 
thoughts may be convincing. We are to 
consider that our Father, who, in the per- 
son of his Son, made the heavens and the 
earth, has a vast dominion. We have 
learned that, though our sun is ninety-five 
millions of miles from us, yet there are 
other suns, many millions of miles farther 
from our sun than he is from us; that 
of all the great luminaries in the heavens 
no two, outside of our own solar system, 
are as near each other as are we and our 
sun. Some of the "fixed stars" are known 
to be so far from us that it takes their 
light millions of years to reach us, and it 
is probable that there are some so far re- 
moved that their light has not yet reached 
us, though moving at the rate of two hun- 
dred thousand miles per second. 

(100) 



The Heavenly World. 101 

We must not forget that he who is our 
God made all these, and keeps them all 
in motion, as well as cares for everything 
on any of them. This then is our Father's 
house, not made with hands. We must re- 
member also that our God is omnipresent, 
as truly in any one of the fixed stars as 
he is on our planet. And yet we are obliged 
to think of him as having a thro-ne in the 
heavens, a place of his presence in a pe- 
culiar sense. We can but think of a cen- 
tral point from which God looks out over 
his infinite universe. John, the beloved of 
Jesus, was permitted to look into the 
heavenly abode, and to see the throne with 
all its attendant glories; the "living crea- 
tures," the elders, the multitude of choris- 
ters who sing the praises of their God 
and their Redeemer. It is possible, there- 
fore, for God to fix a place, as it may 
seem good to himself, which shall be recog- 
nized as his peculiar abode. The extent 
of the place no human being can con- 
ceive. We may suppose it to be commensu- 
rate with the boundless realm of the 
divine Sovereign. And wherever that 
is, there is heaven. It is the pres- 
ence of God and of Christ. It is 
where the redeemed of the Lord walk 
with him. It may be all around us, even 



102 Theology for Plain People. 



now. This, however, seems clear — that 
which we' call heaven and think of as a 
place of blessedness was made by our 
father, and is none too good for his be- 
loved sons and daughters. 

It is not inconsistent with what we are 
told in the Bible, that what are often called 
' ( the heavenly worlds" are more truly such 
than we have thought. They all belong to 
our Father's house, and nothing can delight 
him more than to open up his house to his 
children, the redeemed whom he loves as 
he loves no other except his First-born, 
who is simply the Elder Brother of those 
who have been born of God. We may, 
therefore, confidently expect that, in God's 
own time, according to his good pleasure, 
all the realm of the only true and living 
God will be opened up and made the abode 
of his children. Then it will be their 
privilege to pass from sun to sun, from one 
great planetary system to another, unchal- 
lenged and unrestrained. It will then ap- 
pear to them that it was worth while to 
practice a little self-denial, and endure a 
little hardship here, if it is followed by 
such delights in a world without end. 

To the question, What is heaven? we 
can answer with a degree of certainty, be- 
cause we have it so vividly described in 



The Heavenly World. 103 

the New Testament. It is, first of all, 
"eternal life," a life which begins here 
and knows no ending. It is the life of God, 
and is the spring and occasion of all other 
joys and all the blessedness which a 
redeemed soul can experience. It is a state 
of conscious love, joy, peace, in the pres- 
ence of God and of the Lamb, and of the 
angels, and of the great concourse of the 
saints in light, who ascribe their conquest 
to the Lamb, their victory to his death. It 
is a condition of the soul in which it sings 
with rapture, "Hallelujah; salvation and 
honor and glory and blessing be to our 
God, forever and ever!" This eternal life 
is to be enjoyed in the presence of God, in 
a city into which nothing unclean shall 
ever enter. One who had been caught up 
into that world of blessedness saw a city, 
(not a desert) whose length and breadth 
and height were equal. It had gates al- 
ways open, so that the inhabitants were 
always at liberty to go and come. It had 
massive walls of precious stones, and gates 
of pearls. It had streets of gold, and into 
it were brought the glory and honor of the 
nations. In the midst of the city he saw a 
river called the river of life, its water clear 
as a crystal, and on its banks, on either 
side, grew trees bearing luscious fruit, 



104 Theology for Plain People. 

the trees perennial, their fruit always 
ripening. The city needed no artificial 
light, for he who dwelt in it was the light 
of it; all could see his face and recognize 
him as their own Savior. 

The description of the city, as set forth 
in the last chapters of the Apocalypse, is 
that of the most desirable dwelling place 
conceivable; human language and the most 
exalted imagery being exhausted in the 
description of it; and we are to under- 
stand that the description is only the best 
that can be drawn to give us some concep- 
tion of what we are told — that eye has not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither has the heart 
of man been able to conceive things that 
have been prepared for those who shall 
be permitted to enter that place. Those 
who dwell there shall hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more, neither shall the 
sun light on them, nor any heat, neither 
shall they be left to themselves to wandor 
at will and uninstructed; but One whose 
place betimes is in the midst of the throne 
shall feed them, and shall lead them to the 
fountains of water, "and God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes." 

Thus we are taught to expect great 
things in connection with our heavenly 
abode. It is the universe of God, and yet 



The Heavenly World. 105 

it is possible for the redeemed to enjoy 
all that can be conceived as desirable in 
a city which has foundations, whose build- 
er and maker is the God who made the 
heavens of which we have been speaking. 
If asked whether the things spoken of 
are literal, we say No; they are the best 
that human tongue can describe; but the 
reality is infinitely better and more glori- 
ous than can be conceived by help of the 
description. What the best things of earth, 
separated from all evil, are to the pure in 
heart and the faithful in Christ Jesus, that, 
and far more, is the heaven prepared for 
the saints of God when they have finished 
their sojourn. "There remaineth there- 
fore a rest to the people of God." It is the 
kingdom prepared for the saints "from 
the foundation of the world." 



THE IMPENITENT DEAD. 



In an early article in this series it was 
said that the highest and only infallible 
authority in religion is the Bible. Rea- 
son may help us, and experience is not to 
be despised; but all great questions are to 
be settled, finally, by the Word of God. 
"What saith the Scripture?" is the answer 
to hard questions to-day, as it was in the 
days of Jesus. So when we come to this 
question of utmost importance, as truly as 
when we ask concerning life eternal, we 
must have recourse for answer to the writ- 
ten Word of God. 

Reason tells us that there must be a dis- 
tinction between classes of human beings. 
All peoples have some sort of standard of 
righteousness. All recognize goodness, and 
contrast it with badness. The Word of God, 
especially the New Testament, makes the 
distinction to turn upon the fact of faith 
in Jesus Christ, between those who love 
God and accept the salvation provided by 
him, and those who reject, or neglect "so 
great salvation." If the redeemed of the 

(106) 



The Impenitent Dead. 107 

Lord are received to his loving fellowship, 
and "walk with him in white," what of 
those who do not accept that salvation, and 
da not seek it? "And this is liie eternal," 
said Jesus, to "know thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
sent." If to know Jesus is eternal life, it 
follows that a lack of that knowledge is 
eternal death. There is no middle ground. 
Every one must belong to the one class or 
the other. "Life" and "death" are set over 
against each other, and it is left to us to 
say which we will have. 

If it is objected that certain persons and 
peoples have no knowledge of God, and can 
not have, because God has not revealed 
himself to them, it is answered that, origin- 
ally, all had a knowledge of God. To say 
nothing of the antediluvians, Noah and all 
his sons, with their several wives, had a 
knowledge of the true God. It was the 
privilege of all the descendants of Noah 
equally to know and fear and honor and 
serve the God of Noah. The truth is as 
Paul says, in Romans i., "That which may 
be known of God is manifest in them; for 
God hath shown it unto them; so that they 
are without excuse." "Because, when they 
knew God, they glorified him not as God, 
neither were thankful; but became vain 



108 Theology for Plain People. 

in their imaginations, and their foolish 
heart was darkened. Professing themselves 
to be wise, they became fools." . . . 
" Wherefore God gave them up to un clean- 
ness through the lusts of their own hearts." 
"For this cause God gave them up unto vile 
affections." . . . "And even as they did 
not like to retain God in their knowledge, 
God gave them over to a reprobate mind 
to do those things that are not conven- 
ient." It is not God's fault that the eyes 
of men are blinded; that they do not know 
him; that they prefer to gratify their own 
lusts and passions, and are at enmity 
against him. He has declared that he will 
surely be found by those who seek him. 
No one ever yet went down to eternal death 
begging for mercy, in view of what Christ 
has done. 

We have already seen that "the day," 
"that day," is to be a day of decision, a 
day of the revelation of the wrath, as well 
as of the love of God in Christ. Two class- 
es are to come up for judgment, and these 
classes are to be separated from each other, 
with no possibility, then, of a passing from 
the one side to the other, either way. To 
those of the one class it is said: "Come, 
ye blessed of my Father"; and to the other 
it is said: "Depart, ye cursed, into ever- 



The Impenitent Dead. 109 

lasting fire prepared for the devil and his 
angels." And of these last it is said that 
they "shall go away into everlasting pun- 
ishment. ,, It is worth while to notice that, 
while it is said to the "righteous" that they 
are to go into blessedness, it is a "kingdom 
prepared for them from the foundation of 
the world." But it is not said that the 
place of torment was prepared expressly 
for the wicked. The place of torment was 
not prepared for the wicked, as though God 
had foredoomed them to that place and that 
suffering. That would not be true. It is 
not true that God creates a soul to damn 
it. To say such a thing is to misrepresent 
God. It is true that God has prepared for 
his people a kingdom, and he has full 
knowledge of who are to occupy it. But 
he has not said— and we are not to say,— 
that he has prepared a place for the ungod- 
ly, and has created them that they may oc- 
cupy it. God knows who they are; but he 
has not created men to damn them. God 
has set before men life and death, and they 
are to choose which they will have, It is 
sufficiently evident, however, that unless 
wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, all will 
choose death rather than life. Only those 
who are brought under the influence and 
power of the Holy Spirit choose eternal 



110 Theology for Plain People. 

life. It is a question whether one shall 
have his good things in this life, or in the 
life to come. Most people do not believe 
that it pays to serve God in this present 
life. Who is to blame, if they experience 
eternal death at the end? 

We are not to forget that God has made 
it easy for a soul to be saved. He has 
•not even required that one shall practice 
self-denial, and live godly for a certain 
number of years. He has not said that 
unless one shall serve him faithfully for 
sixty years, or twenty years, or ten years, 
he can not hope to be saved. He "com- 
mands men everywhere to repent," to re- 
pent to-day; to live godly lives from this 
day forward. And yet, so gracious is he 
that though a man has been sinning for 
fifty, sixty, eighty years, he may be saved, 
and be as fully saved as though he had 
never committed a sin. It is not God's 
fault if a sinner is not saved. God has 
made salvation the easiest thing in the 
world. Nothing is so easy as is being 
saved. It is simply trusting in Christ. 
"God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
eth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." The whole matter of sal- 
vation rests upon the one great fact of trust 



The Impenitent Dead. Ill 

in Christ. If God had said to any man: 
Now you must live and serve me, without 
an error, for ten years, or for five years, 
or for five hours, or you can not be saved, 
the case would be different. But God says 
that in the day of repentance salvation 
comes. It is a matter of repentance, of 
regret, of conscious guilt, deserving punish- 
ment. To one who is in that state of mind 
God shows his salvation. To such a one 
Jesus comes. 

It is the unrepentant who is lost. But the 
repentance must not be simply regret for 
being lost. It must be regret of sin; re- 
pentance of sin. The soul must be sin- 
cerely sorry that it is "enmity against God," 
and must be cherishing a desire to be on 
God's side. Only those who can truly and 
truthfully say that they are on God's side 
can hope for salvation. God will not have 
in his kingdom any who are against him. 
All his subjects must love him and be glad 
to have him as their King. His realm is 
a kingdom, not a republic; and all who 
enter there must be willing to have him to 
rule over them. They must be glad that 
he is their King, and must never call in 
question what he may do. Those who call 
him in question here are his enemies, and 
until they repent, they can not enter his 



112 Theology for Plain People. 

kingdom. The blessed thing about it is 
that he accepts repentance in the moment 
of its exercise, no matter at what time it 
occurs. "Whosoever will" may now "take 
of the water of life freely." "Now is the 
accepted time." 

But now, after all this, what of him who 
refuses to accept God's salvation? What 
of him who comes down to death unrepent- 
ant, without Christ? There can be but one 
answer: He dies as he has lived. He dies 
a rebel against God. He dies an enemy of 
God. He dies unwilling to have God as his 
King, to rule over him. There is not the 
least intimation in God's word that one 
can change his state after death. All the 
exhortations and admonitions and prom- 
ises of the Word of God are based on the 
idea that death is the end of probation. 
Life and death are set before us here, and 
we must make the choice here. All the 
teachings of Jesus are based upon the idea 
that the Gospel is for this present world, 
and for this world only. Of those who go 
hence impenitent it is said "their worm 
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." 
"It is good for them to enter into life 
maimed, rather than having the two hands 
to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire." 

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus 



The Impenitent Dead. 113 

was given for the purpose of teaching the 
hopelessness of those who die impenitent. 
"There is a great gulf fixed," so that there 
is no possibility of crossing either way. It 
was Jesus and not Paul who taught these 
things. It can not be said that these were 
Paul's imaginings. For this teaching we 
go "back to Christ." And it was the same 
Christ who taught John, the beloved, that 
the ungodly are "tormented day and night" 
forever. It was the same Jesus who showed 
the bottomless pit, and declared that into 
it the wicked shall be cast, and that "the 
smoke of their torment ascendeth forever 
and ever." There the ungodly are in the 
same case with the beast and the 1 
prophet, and "that old serpent, the devil 
and Satan," who deceived men, teaching 
them that they shall not surely die, and 
shall not be cast into hell. All come to the 
same place, and are of the same kind. The 
devil is Satan, the deceiver and accuser, 

and the deceived are to share his doom with 
him. Their enmity to God is as perpetual 
as is his. There is no word, or form of 
words, which can more clearly represent 
the unending misery of the wicked, none 
more forceful and certain than is the 
phraseology used in the Scriptures. And 
if we are asked whether we think that hell 

(9) 



114 Theology for Plain People. 

is as bad as it is represented, we say: God 
has chosen the strongest words and figures 
to represent it, and yet they are not equal 
to the task. Just as the description of 
heaven fails for want of words and figures 
to represent it in its fullness, so human 
language fails to tell the story of the woe 
awaiting those who are impenitent, with- 
out Christ. 



THE BODY OF CHRIST. 



It is that through which he works in the 
world. Y/e distinguish between the soul 
and the body of man. We admit and hold 
that the soul can exist without the body. 
We believe that the time is coming when 
soul and body shall be separated, the lat- 
ter returning to the earth, the former re- 
turning to Him who gave it. When the 
Lord Christ went away to his Father he 
left in the world certain men who were 
to be intimately connected with the future 
of his kingdom on earth, and he went so 
far as to tell them that whatsoever they 
should bind on earth should be bound in 
heaven, and that what they should loose 
on earth should be loosed in heaven. He 
had so instructed those men, had given 
them such an insight into his kingdom 
and the things which pertained to it, that 
they would not fail to maintain its in- 
tegrity and transmit to others what they 
had received of him. He made them his 
hands and feet, his agents for the promo- 
tion of his cause among men. 
(115) 



116 Theology for Plain People, 

In due time he added to the number of 
these both men and women born of the 
same Spirit, filled with the same love to 
him, moved to activity by the same in- 
dwelling power, impelled by the same con- 
sciousness that through them and by them 
their Master was to bring the world to 
a knowledge of himself and of his salva- 
tion. These men and women became a 
multitude which no man could number, 
and they wrought mightily for centuries. 
But they took to themselves certain others 
who had not the same faith, the same 
love, the same zeal, the same conscious- 
ness, and the glory departed from the 
conglomerate mass. The promise, "Lo, I 
am with you alway," was made to those 
who truly believed and were truly spi- 
ritual; to those who had knowledge of 
the way of life and could teach the way to 
others. And these, together with all those 
who became possessed of like precious 
faith, became "the body of Christ,'' his 
hands, his feet, his second self, for which 
he gave himself, "purifying unto himself 
a people for his own possession, zealous of 
good works." All such are members of 
the body of Christ. It can be said of them 
truly that they are "members of his body" 
(of his flesh and of his bones). It is 



The Body of Christ. 117 

through his body, animated by his Spirit, 
that he does his work in the world. 

This body is sometimes called "the 
church of Christ/' as in Matt. xvi. 18; 
"the church of God," as in Acts xx. 28; 
1 Cor. xv. 9, etc. In other places it is 
called "the bride" of Christ, as in Rev. 
xxi. 9. Especially in the letter to the 
Ephesians, he who had peculiar opportuni- 
ty to learn the mysteries of the kingdom 
took occasion to dwell upon this relation 
of Christ to his church, likening it to the 
relation between husband and wife, the 
most intimate known to humanity. It is 
a great "mystery," incomprehensible to 
those who have had no experience of the 
fact; but to those who have had experience 
it is a source of untold and perpetual de- 
light. The only thing by which a pos- 
sible alienation between Christ and his 
church can be effected is that for which 
human divorce is justified; nothing can 
separate the church from Christ but apos- 
tasy, if, indeed, such a thing is possible. 
It is composed of redeemed souls, regen- 
erate souls, souls in which the divine life 
has been implanted, and which are bound 
to him by a mutual pledge. He has prom- 
ised to love, cherish, protect, keep, and 
suffer for his bride; and she, in turn, has 



118 Theology for Plain People. 

promised to love, honor, and obey him. 
He is to her the law of her life. His will 
is her pleasure, and to own him as her 
lord, as Sarai owned Abraham, is the 
most blessed thought and experience of 
her existence. 

At the same time Christ, the bridegroom, 
is proud of his bride, of the church which 
is his body. It is she who "looketh forth 
as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as 
the sun, terrible as an army with ban- 
ners." In the ages gone he looked upon 
her a wanderer, sunken in sin, pressing 
onward to destruction. He looked upon 
her first with the eye of pity, then with 
the eye of love, and undertook to deliver 
her from herself and from him who had 
wasted and debauched her. For her he 
came with a message of love, and laid 
down his life for her. He received her as 
the reward of his mighty work, the trophy 
of his conflict with her captor and tyran- 
nizing master; and by virtue of one tre- 
mendous sacrifice he rescued her from her 
bondage, lifted her up, put clean raiment 
upon her, set her by his side and pro- 
claimed her his own, his beloved, his 
other self. He is proud of her because of 
what he has already accomplished in her, 
and more because of the possibilities of 



The Body of Christ. 119 

the future. He sees her even now set at 
his own right hand in the heavenly planes, 
her garments of wrought needle-work, 
spotless, glistening, suited to her who 
shares the inheritance of the Son of God, 
to whom all power in heaven and earth is 
freely given. He presents her to his Fa- 
ther as the outcome of his heroic sacri- 
fice, the jewel whose value he only could 
discern. 

This body of Christ, we have said, is that 
through which he carries on his work in 
the world. It is his feet, on which the 
gospel is carried to those whom he would 
have added to it as additional members. 
It is his mouth, by which he makes known 
to the sons of men the riches of his grace. 
It is his eyes, by which he discerns the 
dark corners of the earth which he would 
explore and enlighten. It is his hand, by 
which he reaches out after those in peril 
and in captivity, and delivers them. It 
is this body which is doing the work of 
Christ in the world. It is this body which 
is animated by him, his Spirit dwelling in 
it, and it obeying in love. It is to him 
what the young wife is to her husband 
as they separate from the associations of 
youth and set out to make a home for 
themselves, the wife in full sympathy with 



120 Theology for Plain People. 

every plan and every enterprise of her 
husband, knowing that what is his is hers; 
that the home which shelters him must 
also shelter her; that any failure on her 
part lays so much heavier burden upon 
him and renders the success of life so 
much less certain. 

The health of this body depends upon 
the health of each individual member. 
Gout can not be in the foot and the rest 
of the body be unaffected, feel no pain. A 
felon can not be on a finger and the rest 
of the body sleep soundly through the 
night. A mote can not be in the eye and 
the rest of the body be indifferent to the 
pain. A needle has a fine point, invisible 
to the naked eye, and yet its prick sends 
a thrill of pain to the farthest extremity 
of the body. The loss of a little finger, 
or a section of a finger, is deplored as a 
loss to the body. Only dead members are 
willingly removed, and then the cut is in 
the live flesh. It hurts. And when the 
anesthetic gives surcease of pain for the 
moment of cutting, pain comes again with 
the healing; and the member amputated 
is missed, even when the healing is com- 
plete. 

This body is sometimes called "the 
Church universal/' composed of "all who in 



The Body of Christ. 121 

every place call upon the name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, both ours and theirs." 
It is not the same as a local assembly, 
composed of persons gathered according 
to various rules and with different degrees 
of carefulness and discrimination. This 
church of which we have been speaking is 
always a living body. It is immortal. In 
it the life of Christ himself pulsates. It 
is fruitful and is increasing from day to 
day, from age to age. Its record is in the 
Lamb's Book of Life; and the question for 
each intelligent soul . to ask is, "Aim I 
enrolled therein?" 



A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



The word church, derived from the 
Greek, has passed through many trans- 
formations, and is traceable in many lan- 
guages. In the Greek — kuriaka — spelled 
with the English letters — means something 
pertaining to or owned by the Lord. The 
Kuriakos is the Lord, or Master, and what 
is his may be kuriakos, as his house, or 
kuriaka, as his day, or, as a body of people 
recognizing him as Lord and professing to 
worship him. In the German it is kirche, 
in the Scotch dialect it is kirk, these 
words applying first to the house, and then 
to the congregation worshiping therein 
And so the word has come to mean, in 
English, either the house, or the organized 
assembly. It is here treated as applicable 
to the organized body assembled in the 
name of Jesus Christ, or an organization 
of enrolled members, ideally together, 
though for a time scattered widely. It 
may be a church, though it assemble only 
once a week, or once a month, or once a 
year. 

Another Greek word which has come to 
(122) 



A Christian Church. 123 

have a similar meaning in our language is 
ecclesia, or ekklesia, sometimes called 
kuriakas ekklesia, or church of the Lord; 
or, as in several places in the New Testa- 
ment (Acts xx. 28; 1 Cor. i. 2; 1 Tim. iii. 
5, etc.), church of God. The word ekkle- 
sia, however, in New Testament times, 
had a wider meaning, as in Acts xix. 32, 41, 
where it designates an unlawful assem- 
bly, a mob. In modern times it is rarely 
applied to anything else than an assembly 
gathered for Christian worship, or a body 
of people recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord 
and professing to worship him. In a still 
narrower sense, we Baptists say that "A 
visible church is a congregation of bap- 
tized believers, associated by covenant in 
the faith and fellowship of the Gospel; ob- 
serving the ordinances of Christ; governed 
by his laws; and exercising the gifts, 
rights and privileges invested in them by 
his word." It will be noticed that this 
definition is defective in that it makes no 
provision for a dispersed organization. It 
says "a congregation." But it is evident 
that a congregation is an assembly, and 
can not be scattered, as a church is, except 
on stated or special occasions. 

Then, again, our definition makes a 
church "a congregation of baptized believ- 



124 Theology for Plain People. 

ers, covenanted," etc. That might be all 
right, if it were practicable to secure such 
a congregation. But it is evident enough 
that if the definition were strictly applied, 
there is not such a thing as a church on 
earth (unless it may be made up of only 
two or three, or half a dozen genuine 
saints). It might be better to say that 
a church of Christ is an organized body of 
professed believers in Christ, baptized in 
obedience to his commandment and asso 
ciated by covenant in the faith and fel- 
lowship of the Gospel, etc., etc. Strictly, 
according to Baptist ideas, such is a true 
church of Christ, as visible here on earth. 
It differs from "the church of Christ," "the 
body of Christ," in that the latter is made 
up of saints only, every member having 
been born of God, while a church usually 
has in its membership some who are not 
genuine Christians, saints, sanctified. 
What can be said of the church of Christ 
can not always, with truth, be said of a 
church of Christ, and a failure to discrim- 
inate between the two is an occasion of 
much confusion in our thinking, in our 
writing and in our speaking. 

It is customary 10 say of a church that 
it is of divine origin; and so it is, in that 
its members are, for the most part, His 



A Christian Church. 125 

people, his redeemed, drawn together by 
mutual love for him and the things of his 
kingdom. It has sometimes been said 
that Christ himself organized the first 
Christian church. But we fail to find 
any authority for that statement in the 
New Testament. There is nothing to 
show just when and how the first church 
was organized. It was rather a growth, 
the result of a rallying of Christians, be- 
cause of their mutual interests and their 
love to their Lord, the Kurios, Master of 
them all. Because they believed in him, 
had assembled in his name, recognized him 
as Lord, they constituted a kurios, sl 
church. And so when the disciples of 
Jesus went everywhere preaching the 
Word, and when they had made converts, 
these converts came together, drawn by 
a common faith and a mutual love, and so 
formed a church, whether they had 
adopted any formal covenant, or had 
formulated any rules by which they were 
to be governed or not. Three persons 
might constitute a church, or three thou- 
sand might be a church. It was a body 
in the midst of which the Lord Christ him- 
self dwelt. It was not his body, in the full 
sense, but it was such an assembly as he 
loved to dwell in and govern. 



126 Theology for Plain People. 

It does not follow, however, that every 
organization called a church is Christ- 
made. Not even every one which is com- 
posed of professed believers is Christ- 
made, or Christ-begotten. Such churches 
have been the result of strife and bitter- 
ness and wrong-doing. In them may 
dwell sorcerers and whoremongers and 
idolaters and extortioners and liars and 
lovers of lies. It is not enough to justify 
a claim that it belongs to Christ, simply 
that it is called a church. Neither is it 
proper to say that the churches which are 
organized according to the divine plan, or 
as we find them to-day, constitute "the 
body of Christ." Neither one of them, 
nor all of them together, make up the body 
of Christ. That is composed of only the 
spiritual, while these are always liable to 
have in them those who are not spiritual — 
not having been "born of God." 

The definition of "a visible church," 
usually given by Baptists, excludes all 
other than Baptist churches; and yet, few 
Baptists are quite willing to adhere to 
their definition. They do recognize as 
churches others than Baptist. They may, 
and do regard these other churches as ir- 
regular and lacking in Gospel order; but 
they do not allow the defects in organiza- 



A Christian Church.* 127 

tion to nullify the fact of a church. It 
would be presumptuous for Baptists to 
claim that their churches fill their own 
ideal of what a church is, or should be. 
They know that, after all their pains, their 
churches are not perfect, and are not in 
all things governed by the law of Christ. 
They have occasion to recognize the prin- 
ciple tnat only he who is without sin can 
justly condemn, or throw stones at an- 
other. It is possible for an organization 
not formed on Baptist, or on New Testa- 
ment lines, to be much nearer the heart 
of the Lord than are not a few which call 
themselves Baptist, and their churches 
the only true churches. The Master has 
blotted out many a Baptist church, and 
there is reason to suppose that he will still 
blot out others. As he did to the churches 
in Asia Minor, so he has done to others, 
and so he will do. It becomes us to be 
humble and careful in our judgments, 
while we seek to adhere firmly to the 
truth as it is revealed to us. 

There is reason to believe that not a 
few churches are more anxious to increase 
their membership and lessen the burdens 
resting upon them by sharing them with a 
larger number of members, than they are 
to maintain the purity and spirituality of 



128 Theology for Plain People. 

the membership. The prevailing thought 
of some churches is the increase of mem- 
bership, with but little anxiety as to the 
quality of those added. Such indifference 
to the quality of the new-comers has 
brought many a church very low, and has 
finally resulted in its removal out of its 
place. There are those who sigh and cry 
over the errors in theory and in practice 
all too prevalent among the churches of 
Christ. Sometimes they are heard, and 
their admonitions are heeded; but more 
frequently they are regarded as obstruc- 
tionists and hindrances to be ignored, or 
removed. Theoretically, doubtless, Bap- 
tists are right in their conception of a 
church, but practically they fail to main- 
tain their integrity and to make it appear 
that they are what they profess to be. 
They often fear lest a strict observance of 
the law of Christ may deplete their mem- 
bership and keep away from them those 
whom they think it would be for their 
advantage to enroll and reckon among 
themselves. They need to study more care- 
fully their own definition of a church of 
Christ. 



CHURCH OFFICERS. 

The Church Universal has but one officer, 
and needs but one. He is its pastor, its 
husband, its Savior. To him all authority 
and power have been given, and he is fully 
competent to govern his own. In truth, 
that church needs but little governing. Its 
members have been made "new creatures" 
in him, and he is head over all things 
to it. He loves it with an ^everlasting love, 
and it loves him because in him is its life 
and its safety. 

But the local church, though ideally made 
up of regenerate people and professing to 
take Christ as its head and ruler, is yet 
encompassed with infirmities. Not all 
within it are truly regenerate, and those 
who are regenerate are still in the body, 
and are subject to infirmities, liable to be 
carried away by passion, prejudice, self- 
will, pride and errors of judgment. It 
needs officers and government. It needs 
those who shall keep it up to its duty 
and its privileges. Consequently, the Mas- 
ter has provided for it those whom it does 
well to heed. Paul tells us (1 Cor. xii. 28) 

(10) (129) 



130 Theology for Plain People. 

"God hath set some in the church, first 
apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teach- 
ers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, 
helps, governments, divers kinds of 
tongues." So it was in that early day, and 
how can we be sure that the same things 
are not found or needed to-day? 

Our usual definition of an apostle — one 
who had actually seen the Lord Jesus and 
who was familiar with his sayings and 
doings at first hand — of course eliminates 
apostles from among church officers to-day. 
But the others may be with us still. The 
same Paul tells us (Eph. iv. 11) that when 
the Lord Jesus ascended to heaven, he gave 
gifts to his people, among them being 
"prophets," "evangelists," "pastors" and 
"teachers"; and he tells us that these are 
'"for the perfecting of the saints, for the 
work of ministering, for the building up 
(or edifying) of the body of Christ"— the 
saints at large, who constitute the spiritual 
temple in which he, the Lord of glory, 
dwells. In other places we are told of 
episcopoi and diakonoi, bishops and dea- 
cons; and Paul told Timothy what sort 
of men ought to be set apart to these of- 
fices in the local church. (See 1 Tim. Hi. 
1-12.) Putting all these things together, 
and taking into account the changes of cir- 



Church Officers. 131 

cumstances, we can hardly reduce the full 
number of church officers to two classes, 
as is common among us to-day — "pastors 
and deacons." There is strong reason for 
believing that there is room and work for 
other officers than those reckoned as com- 
ing under these two heads. Nevertheless, 
it may be said that all may be so classed, 
without any violation of the meaning of 
the words. 

As to Pastors. It is quite evident that 
Paul did not mean to restrict the number 
to one in each church. John, on Patmos, 
was directed to write to "the angel" of 
the church in each of the cities, and it 
has been held that the "angel" was the 
pastor. Still, the tenor of Scripture is to 
the effect that more than one "episcopos," 
bishop or pastor is needed by most, if not 
by all churches. A pastor, bishop, elder, 
is an overseer to whom the dearest inter- 
ests of the church are committed; and what 
one man is sufficient for these things? 
Human nature being as weak as it is, the 
combined wisdom and influence of more 
than one man is requisite to direct the 
affairs and correct the errors of any one 
church of any size. 

It is altogether evident that the early 
churches had more than one elder, or bish- 



132 Theology for Plain People. 

op. Paul, writing to the saints at Philippi, 
spoke particularly of "the bishops and dea- 
cons" — both in the plural number. Paul 
and Barnabas bore money contributions to 
"the elders"; Paul and Barnabas ordained 
"elders" in every church; "the apostles, 
elders and brethren" came together to con- 
sider a grave question; the "decrees" were 
"ordained of the elders"; Paul sent for the 
"elders" of the church of Ephesus; Titus 
was directed to ordain "elders" in every 
city where saints were found; James di- 
rected that the sick ones send for "the 
elders" of the church. All these things 
make it quite certain that every New Tes- 
tament church was supposed to be under 
the oversight of bishops, or elders; though 
from the requirements for the office men- 
tioned by Paul in 1 Tim. iii, it is a marvel 
that such men could be found in every 
church. 

While it is true that a New Testament 
church is an independent, self-contained 
body, having in it all the power given or 
required for the transaction of its own 
business, it is not certain that the pro- 
vision for officers contemplated only one 
elder, or bishop, or pastor, in each church. 
There is occasion for a revision of our rules 
of faith and practice on that subject. When 



Church Officers. 133 

we take into account what was regarded 
as useful, if not needful in a church, such 
as "prophecy," "teaching," "helps," "gov- 
ernments," etc., it becomes quite evident 
that one man is not equal to the task now- 
a-days imposed upon him. It is evident 
that churches in these modern times have 
departed from the rules laid down for them 
in the New Testament. To-day the pastor, 
bishop, elder, must combine in himself the 
gift of prophecy, of teaching, of "miracles," 
etc., or there is a serious lack in the 
church's equipment. And that there is 
such a lack is all too painfully evident 
in most cases. 

And then, as to Deacons. These were 
evidently what were called "helps." The 
word diakonos means one who serves, one 
who helps, one who co-operates with others 
in service which is needful to the highest 
usefulness of a church of Christ. No one 
doubts that the deacons of the early church 
were a group of men chosen for helpful 
purposes. If "the seven," chosen accord- 
ing to Acts vi., are to be regarded as hav- 
ing been deacons, they were charged with 
a great responsibility — the care of all the 
temporal and material interests of the 
churches. They had a common fund out 
of which they distributed, according to the 



134 Theology for Plain People. 

needs of each member, for food and cloth- 
ing and shelter. It was an emergency, and 
its stringency soon passed away. But the 
principle remained, and still remains. 

A church — every church— has, or should 
have, a common fund out of which pro- 
vision is made for the special needs of the 
body. All this, if nothing else, devolves 
upon the deacons. They are the trustees 
or financial agents of the church. All 
moneys should pass through their hands, 
and for it all they should, as a body, be 
held responsible. They are the treasurers 
of the church, which knows no other of- 
ficers. A New Testament church knew 
nothing of "trustees," or clerk, or treasurer, 
apart from the deacons. All such officers 
were and are deacons. So is every one 
commissioned to perform service in behalf 
of a church. To choose out two or three, 
or six or seven (presumably the best) men 
and call them deacons, while clerk, treas- 
urer, superintendent of the Sunday-school, 
trustees and any number of committees 
are chosen, is not in harmony with the New 
Testament idea. If a body of elders, bish- 
ops (episcopoi), looked after the spiritual 
affairs of a church, while a body of dea- 
cons, men "of honest report, full of the 
Holy Ghost and of wisdom," looked after 



Church Officers. 135 

all the other interests, most of our churches 
would get on far better than they do now. 

It is the privilege of the church to elect 
these officers, and it may, at times, sug- 
gest what it would like to have them do; 
but to elect and ordain deacons and then 
take out of their hands everything except 
to pass the elements at the Lord's Supper, 
and minister to a few sick or needy peo- 
ple, is far from the idea had in view when 
"the seven" were appointed; and when the 
apostle spoke of the helps, governments, 
etc., which were declared to be given to the 
church. 

There is room and occasion for great im- 
provement along this line. If the New Tes- 
tament idea of deacons were carried out, 
one, or two, or three men, or even six, 
would not be enough for the average 
church. If the question of deaconesses is 
raised, we answer that we find in the New 
Testament no intimation that the office of 
deaconess was known to the apostolic age. 
If a woman ever served a church, as doubt- 
less some did, she was not called a dea- 
coness. Phebe, of Cenchrea, was not a 
deaconess, but a deacon. Yet we have no 
intimation that any woman was chosen to 
an office in a New Testament church. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 



The firslrduty of every human being com- 
ing to consciousness is repentance of sin; 
the second an exercise of faith in Christ 
as the God-ordained Savior. He who does 
these things immediately passes from death 
to life, is born of God, is an heir of God 
and a joint-heir with Jesus himself. All 
that the Father hath he gives to his First- 
born, and all that the First-born hath he 
shares with his brethren. 

To be a child of God is to possess an 
obedient spirit, a willingness to do what- 
soever is required of him. "Ye are my 
friends if ye do whatsoever I have com- 
manded you." "He that hath my command- 
ments and keepeth them, he it is that 
loveth me." "If any man love me, he will 
keep my words." "If ye keep my com- 
mandments, ye shall abide in my love, even 
as I have kept my Father's commandments 
and abide in his love." In such words did 
our Lord Jesus, our Elder Brother, signify 
his will and wish for his beloved. And it 
is remarkable that he prefaced all his 
(136) 



The First Christian Duty. 137 

teaching by an illustration of his wish con- 
cerning his people. His first public act, as 
he entered upon his ministry, was to seek 
and receive baptism. When expostulated 
with by him who thought himself unworthy 
to perform the service, his significant reply 
was: "Suffer it now; for thus it becometb 
us to fulfill all righteousness." 

While the Forerunner was yet making 
disciples and baptizing them, Jesus himsel/ 
"made and baptized" more than John di<^ 
administering the rite through his dis- 
ciples, thus signifying his will that his dis- 
ciples be baptized. He did not hesitate tc 
go ■ into the immediate vicinity of John's 
baptistry and there administer the rite 
which had characterized John, and will al 
ways characterize him. It is thus taught 
that Jesus himself not only approved what 
Jchn did, but he himself emphasized it and 
practiced it. It is impossible, then, to be* 
lieve that baptism was, in the eyes of 
Jesus, a matter of indifference, or of small 
importance. And, when giving his final 
charge to those whom he was so soon to 
leave, he commanded them to make and 
baptize disciples, as though that were the 
very first thing to follow faith in him, the 
Author of the new life of the soul. The 
first thing, after discipling, came baptism; 



138 Theology for Plain People. 

after that was to come the "teaching," the 
unfolding of the doctrines of the kingdom, 
the pointing out of other duties and privi- 
leges. 

Then, when the day of Pentecost nad 
fully come and a great multitude asked 
what they must do, he who had learned the 
will of the Master said, "Repent and he 
baptized, every one of you, in the name of 
Jesus Christ, because of the remission of 
your sins."* They who received the word 
of Peter were at once baptized, probably 
the same day. Thus was emphasized the 
truth that baptism is the first duty of the 
believer. 

Not long after Pentecost, a disciple of 
Jesus made converts at Samaria, and im- 
mediately those who believed the things 
spoken by Philip "were baptized, both men 
and women." Thus, unlike the Jewish rite 
of circumcision, the Gospel ordinance was 
for believers of both sexes, and is further 
made more evident in that women believ- 



[The writer holds firmly to the belief that 
the Greek preposition "eis,' in Acts ii. 38, 
usually translated "for," or "unto," should be 
translated "because of," or "with respect to." The 
baptism was not to effect the forgiveness of 
sins, but was to be received because the sins 
had been already remitted.] 



The First Christian Duty. 139 

ers at Philippi were baptized, as were 
households, evidently including females, in 
other places. When Cornelius and his mil- 
itary household at Cesarea accepted the 
instruction of Peter, under the influence of 
the Holy Spirit, all were immediately bap- 
tized. When Philip, on the road from Je- 
rusalem to Gaza, made a convert, an Ethi- 
opian of high station, he at once baptized 
him in water by the wayside. When Paul 
preached to the women at the place of 
prayer in Philippi, the believers were at 
once baptized. When the jailer and his 
household accepted the message of Paul and 
Silas, they were baptized, even before the 
morning. 

All the teachings and allusions of the 
New Testament seem to take it for granted 
that every Christian had been baptized. 
Saul of Tarsus, after his three days of 
anxious thought and agony of soul, accept- 
ing the truth spoken by the Damascene 
disciple, was immediately baptized. When 
he wrote his letters he assumed that those 
who received them had been baptized, 
though he himself had not been ambitious 
to administer the rite, permitting others to 
do it, rather than doing it himself. But in 
his view, to be baptized with respect to 
Christ was a putting on of Christ; it sig- 



140 Theology for Plain People. 

niiied a fellowship with the sufferings of 
Christ, a symbolizing of his death. So 
prominent was baptism made, in that early 
day, and so immediately did it follow an 
acceptance of the Gospel of Christ as Lord, 
as well as Savior, that it was noi neeai-.ii 
for the teachers of that day to speak of 
it as a neglected duty, a thing that, ai 
least some Christians had avoided or min- 
imized. Of all the duties enjoined upon 
the disciples of New-Testament times there 
seemed to be no occasion to urge and en- 
force the duty of baptism. Nothing is said 
of the unbaptized believers, nor is it in- 
timated that some had neglected the ob- 
servance, and needed to be exhorted to re- 
ceive it. 

By all this it is not meant that baptism 
is needful in order that one may become a 
Christian. There is nothing to show that 
only the baptized can be Christians. The 
truth is that only the Christian can prop- 
erly receive baptism. Baptism is an ex- 
ternal sign, ordained of God, by which the 
believer signifies his acceptance of Christ; 
his sympathy with Christ in his death; his 
own death to sin, and his "newness of 
life," secured by the act of faith in Christ 
as a personal Savior. But the entire 
analogy of the New-Testament teaching is 



The First Christian Duty. 141 

that just as soon as one accepts Christ, 
and receives the witness, that he is a new 
creature, born of God, he should receive 
baptism, and thenceforth "walk in new- 
ness of life." The "old man" has been put 
to death, "crucified with Christ," and "the 
new man, that after God hath been created 
in righteousness and holiness of truth/ 
has risen up in the place of the "old." Bap- 
tism does not effect the death of the "old," 
nor the beginning of the "new," but it does 
signify that he who receives it is already 
a new man, acting in obedience to him 
who has made it a symbol of his own death, 
burial and resurrection. 

It follows that he who can say that bap- 
tism is a matter of little consequence — 
that one can live a Christian life as well 
without it as with it — has failed to enter 
into the spirit of the Lord Jesus. He shows 
a lack of appreciation of what has been 
done for him, and in him, if, indeed, any- 
thing has been done in him. In any case, 
it shows a lack of a sensitive nature, of 
a will subjected to the divine will; it 
shows a blunted sense of the relation be- 
tween himself and his Lord. One who has 
thus made void the command of Christ, by 
his indifference and neglect, hardly ought 
to ask us to accept him as a genuine be- 



142 Theology for Plain People. 

liever, a child of God, a fit associate of 
those who have been obedient to the divine 
will and commandment. He who is indif- 
ferent to this first Christian duty ought 
not to ask us to accept him as entitled to 
all the privileges and fellowship to which 
our Lord welcomes his beloved who have 
obeyed him. "If ye love me, ye will keep 
my commandments," says he; and it is not 
easy to see how one who is indifferent to a 
divine command can yet assure himself that 
he is in the way of duty and of peace. 



BAPTISM— ITS SYMBOLISM. 



To receive baptism being the first Chris- 
tian duty, it becomes him or her who would 
live godly to know definitely what baptism 
is and what it means. If Jesus the Chrtst 
ordained it, we can not think that he failed 
to indicate what it is and what it means. 
Accordingly, as we study the New Testa 
ment, we become convinced that nothing is 
more fully and clearly established than is 
the nature and significance of baptism. 

A very common definition of Christian 
baptism is that it is an immersion, or 
dipping in water of one who professes faith 
in Christ as his Savior, in the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit. The baptism which John preached 
and administered can not have meant all 
this, because neither he nor his disciples 
had any clear conception of either the Son, 
or the Holy Spirit. Beside, we have no in- 
timation that he used the name of either 
when he administered the rite. The most 
he could do was to tell the people that 
they were to repent of their sins and be- 
(143) 



144 Theology for Plain People. 

lieve on him who was to come after him, 
one whose shoe latchets he was not 
worthy to unloose; one who should bap- 
tize in the Holy Spirit, even fire. The 
language and the imagery all go to show 
that John led his disciples into the River 
Jordan, or other body of water, and there 
dipped them in the water. It is said of 
those whom he accepted as true disciples 
that they were "baptized of him in Jor- 
dan, confessing their sins." Even Jesus 
himself was baptized of John. 

That the word baptize means to dip, or 
immerse, has been established beyond a 
doubt. We can -not here afford the space 
to discuss the subject in its fullness. There 
are so many monographs on baptism that 
it is not needful to go over the ground 
in this connection. Suffice it to say that 
the best and most recently published dic- 
tionaries of the Greek language declare 
that such is its meaning, and there is not 
in all Greek literature a single case in 
which it is to be translated by either 
"sprinkle" or "pour." The Greek word for 
"sprinkle" is rantizo, and for "pour" sev- 
eral different words are used, such as hallo, 
ekckeo, ekchuno, kerannumi, but no one of 
these is used with respect to baptism. In 
every place where the rite of baptism is 



Baptism — Its Symbolism. 145 

referred to the word used is baptizo, in 
some one of its forms, so that when we 
have determined what the word baptizo 
means, we know what baptism was and is. 
At the present day no man who has regard 
to his reputation for scholarship and hon- 
esty gives any other definition of the word 
baptizo than "dip" or "immerse." Accord- 
ing to the use of the word one substance 
may be baptized or dipped into any other 
fluid substance, such as oil, or milk, or 
water. But in no case is the fluid substance 
represented as poured or sprinkled upon 
the thing baptized. 

True, it is said that the Holy Spirit was 
poured forth upon those assembled at Pen- 
tecost, and in the Old Testament God prom- 
ised to "pour forth of his Spirit" (Joel ii. 
28 and following verses); but neither of 
these acts was baptism. At Pentecost the 
room where the people were assembled 
was "filled," so that every one was envel- 
oped in the Spirit, and, inasmuch as it is 
said that all were "filled with the Holy 
Spirit," it is as fair to conclude that to 
baptize is to fill, as it is to claim that it 
means to pour forth, or pour upon. The. 
truth is that wherever Christian baptism is 
referred to the word used is some form of 
baptizo, and never a word meaning to 

(11) 



146 Theology for Plain People. 

sprinkle, or to pour. Beside, the preposi- 
tions used with the word "baptize" never 
mean "with," or "upon," but always "in," 
or "into." While it is true that the Com- 
mon Version of the Bible frequently has 
"with water" and "with the Holy Spirit," 
the Revised Version, made almost exclus- 
ively by other than Baptist scholars, put 
"in" where the others have "with." John 
baptized "in water." He told those who 
heard him that Jesus would "baptize in 
the Holy Spirit" and "in fire." The proposi- 
tion eis, sometimes used with the word 
baptizo, means, in all such cases, not into, 
but "with respect to," "with reference to," 
"because of." We can not baptize one into 
the Holy Spirit, nor into the name of Christ, 
nor into the Father and the Son and the 
Holy Spirit. But we can baptize with re- 
spect to the name, with respect to the death 
of Christ; that is, having these things in 
view when we baptize. We conclude then, 
that the rite commanded by the Lord 
Christ, to be observed by all his disciples, 
in all ages, is the immersion, or dipping 
in water, of one who professes faith in 
him, having respect to the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit. This definition of baptism excludes 



Baptism — Its Symbolism. 147 

infants, idiots and unbelieving adults. It 
includes only those who intelligently pro- 
fess faith in Christ as a personal Savior. 

As to the symbolism of baptism. We 
find that in one or two instances (such as 
Acts xxii. 16) there seems to be in baptism 
the idea of washing, but the washing was 
evidently to be a cleansing such as can 
be effected only by plunging into the water 
that which is to be cleansed. Surely the 
"washing of regeneration'' is not a sprink- 
ling nor a pouring. But the figure of wash- 
ing is used only once or twice in the New 
Testament, while the figure of a death, 
burial and resurrection is used several 
times with great definiteness. We are told 
(Rom. vi. 3) that to be baptized with re- 
spect to Jesus Christ is to be baptized with 
respect to his death, and that in baptism 
we are buried with him as though we had 
died with, or in him. And it is said that 
if we have been with him in that which 
symbolizes his death, we shall be also with 
him in that which symbolizes his resurrec- 
tion, namely, when we come up out of the 
water of baptism in which we have been, 
for the moment, buried. It is also said, in 
Col. ii. 12, that in baptism we are buried 
with Christ, and in the same ordinance 



148 Theology for Plain People. 

we are risen with Mm. Of course, this 
idea of death, burial and resurrection is 
not suggested by either sprinkling or pour- 
ing, but it is fully justified and emphasized 
in the act of baptism, immersion. In the 
act of baptism, that is immersion, we sym- 
bolize a washing, and at the same time we 
symbolize death and resurrection, while in 
sprinkling we symbolize neither a wash- 
ing, nor a death, nor a resurrection. All 
this tends to confirm the conclusion that 
to baptize is to immerse, or dip the believer 
in water, "in the name of the Father and 
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." 

And to this great truth the world of 
scholarship, as well as of tradition, bears 
witness. Even those who cling tenaciously 
to sprinkling admit that immersion was 
the baptism of the first Christian century, 
and of all the centuries following, till the 
eleventh, except in special cases, and it 
is now the practice of the Greek, the Rusr 
sian, the Abysinnian Churches, as well 
as of several of the large denominations 
of Christians in our own land. The Church 
of Rome teaches that it was the custom of 
the early Church, but claims that the Ro- 
man Church had a right to change it for 
sprinkling. The subject is one of very 



Baptism — Its Symbolism. 149 

great importance, because it involves our 
idea of obedience. "If ye love me, ye will 
keep my commandments," said Jesus; and 
when it comes to such a matter as that 
of baptism it is essential that we follow 
his commandment literally. We have no 
right to substitute something else for what 
he has specifically commanded. We do not 
allow our children to substitute one thing 
for another when we give them specific 
commands. A servant who says that, 
though his master, or employer, told him 
to do a certain thing, it is all right if he 
does another, can not expect the praise of 
the master, and runs the risk of punish- 
ment or dismissal. The act of baptism 
in water in the name of the Trinity is one 
of the most beautiful and impressive cere- 
monies of all known to us. Even those 
who do not practice it have to confess that 
it is both beautiful and significant. And 
it is so, not because it is of human origin, 
but because it is of divine origin. We dare 
not mar it nor neglect it. 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 

So it is called in the New Testament 
(Greek, Kuriakos deipnos; in our phrase- 
ology, Lord's Supper), 1 Cor. xi. 20. It 
is sometimes referred to as "the breaking 
of bread," and afterwards, in early Chris- 
tian history, it was spoken of as "The 
Eucharist," this last term being applied 
to it because it was accompanied by special 
thanksgiving. It is never, as an ordinance, 
spoken of in the New Testament as "The 
Communion." This last term is objec- 
tionable, because of the unwarranted use 
made of it. In 1 Cor. x. 16 it is asked: 
"The cup of blessing ... is it not a com- 
munion of the blood of Christ?" "The 
bread ... is it not a communion of the 
body of Christ?" Thus there are two com- 
munions — one of the blood and another of 
the body; but the Supper of the Lord is 
not called "a communion," much less "The 
Communlion." It would be well if we 
should always avoid the use of the phrase 
"The Communion." 
(150) 



The Supper of the Lord. 151 

What is it then? Paul tells us (1 Cor. 
xi, 23 and following verses) "The Lord 
Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed 
took bread; and when he had given thanks, 
he brake it, and said, This is my body, 
which is for you; this do in remembrance 
of me. In like manner also the cup, 
after supper, saying, This cup is the new 
covenant in my blood: this do, as often 
as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For 
as often as ye eat this bread and drink 
the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death, till 
he come." We can but regard Paul as the 
best of all expositors of the works and 
words of Jesus, and we are glad to have 
his statement of the facts and of their sig- 
nificance, as well as his testimony to the 
custom of the early Christians, in the 
first century after the death and resurrec- 
tion of our Lord. 

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and 
Luke, we have given the circumstances 
under which the Supper of the Lord was 
instituted. All the evangelists named are 
in substantial agreement as to the solemn 
event and the details of the institution. 
Jesus himself gave its meaning when he 
said: "This do, as oft as ye do it, in 
remembrance of me." In baptism he has 



152 Theology for Plain People. 

given us a reminder of his death, burial 
and resurrection, events which can not be 
repeated. In the Supper he gives us an 
observance which he bids us repeat as often 
as we will, only doing all in remembrance 
of him. It is evident that the Supper was 
given as emblematic of the nourishment to 
be derived from intimate communion with 
Christ. He had previously declared that 
his body is meat (or bread) indeed, and 
his blood is drink indeed. He declared that 
unless one should eat of his flesh (his 
body) and drink of his blood, there would 
be no life in him. But whoever should eat 
of his flesh and drink of his blood should 
have eternal life abiding in him. Thus it 
is signified that the Christian is to con- 
stantly feed upon the Lord Jesus and so 
maintain his spiritual life. And this is 
what is symbolized in the Supper of the 
Lord. We utterly repudiate the idea that 
when he said "This is my body ,, — "this is 
my blood," he meant to say that he held 
his body in his hand, or held his blood in 
the "cup." He could only mean that the 
bread and the cup (the wine in the cup) 
were emblems of his body and of his blood, 
and that these were given as a sacrificial 
ransom for his people. 



The Supper of the Lord. 153 

As to the circumstances of the institution 
of the Supper: It was in a room where 
were gathered only those whom he called 
"apostles," his most intimate associates. 
They were reclining at the table, according 
to the custom of the times. The pascal 
lamb had been eaten and disposed of. 
There remained some of the bread and 
some of the wine. Jesus took a portion of 
the bread (possibly a "loaf" of the bread) 
and brake and distributed it, bidding his 
disciples to see to it that each one got a 
piece. So he took one of the cups from 
the table and passed it 3 so that each drank 
of the "one cup." He did not command 
them to kneel, nor in any wise change 
their places, or their attitude. He did not 
intimate that they were to worship the 
elements, nor were they to make any dem- 
onstration other than they were making 
at the passover supper. It is, therefore, 
contrary to the spirit of the observance 
to kneel at an altar, as though offering a 
sacrifice, or to be careful to take the bread 
and cup in bare hands, as though there 
were something peculiarly holy about them. 
Nevertheless, the Lord's Supper should be 
observed with great solemnity, because it 
ought to bring us nearer to and into fuller 



154 Theology for Plain People. 

sympathy with our Lord than does any- 
thing else in Christian life, with the ex- 
ception of baptism. 

Though, in the first instance, only the 
twelve disciples were present (though it 
is probable that Judas had gone out before 
the Supper was instituted), it is evident 
that they understood that in remembrance 
of their Lord and Savior, all true and 
obedient disciples, of both sexes, were to 
be participants in the observance, even to 
the end of the ages. 

As to the elements — the bread and the 
wine: It seems evident that the bread was 
a sort of biscuit, in that case unleavened; 
and that "the cup" contained wine, such 
as was ordinarily used at the passover 
feast. There is nothing to indicate that, 
in all observances of the Supper, only un- 
leavened bread should be used. The word 
for unleavened bread in the Greek, is 
azumos, while the word for bread is artos. 
It is notable that the word azumos is 
avoided when the bread is spoken of, and 
it is simply said he "took bread." That 
means that the quality of the bread is not 
important. So it is said that "he took 
the cup," or a cup, and it is not said what 
the cup contained. But, inasmuch as Jesus 



The Supper of the Lord. 155 

said that he would not any more drink of 
the fruit of the vine, we are justified in 
holding that the contents of the cup wa3 
the wine of the passover. The color of the 
wine usually is that of blood, and thus it 
was a fit symbol of the blood. But it does 
not follow that the liquid in the cup must 
always be fermented — alcoholic. What is 
required is that it be of "the fruit of the 
vine." Neither water, nor milk, nor beer, 
nor whisky, nor any product of grain may 
be used. And inasmuch as grape juice is 
usually mixed with water, it follows that 
"the fruit of the vine" may be mingled 
with water, though with nothing else. 

As to the frequency of the observance: 
That depends upon the convenience and the 
spirit of the participant. In the New Tes- 
tament nothing is said as to the frequency. 
That is left to us to determine. All re- 
quired is that it shall be "in remem- 
brance" of Jesus, the Christ, who gave his 
life for those who believe on him. 

Who are to partake in the Lord's Sup- 
per? Evidently it was given to believers, 
and was to be observed by believers only, 
those who in it remembered Christ. It is 
not for careless, indifferent persons, who 
can not "discern the Lord's body." It 



156 Theology for Plain People. 

should be preceded by a rigid and conscien- 
tious self-examination, though it does not 
follow that only one who is satisfied with 
himself is to partake of the Supper. Satis- 
faction with Christ, rather than with self, 
is what ought to be experienced. No un- 
godly person can be satisfied with Christ, 
and only true Christians should be encour- 
aged to participate in the Supper. More? 
than this, he who would partake at the 
Lord's table ought to be an obedient be- 
liever. He ought to have fully committed 
himself to Christ, to obey his command- 
ments. He ought to have begun to keep 
the commandments of his Lord by observ- 
ing the first duty of a Christian, which 
as we have previously seen, is baptism. 
The person who does not seek baptism fails 
to give satisfactory evidence that he has 
been born from above and belongs to 
Christ. "The judgment of charity" may 
be applied to him, but that is not all that 
ought to be expected. Only those who have 
been baptized on profession of faith in 
Christ, those who are able to appreciate 
the ordinance, "discerning the Lord's 
body," ought to be encouraged to come to 
the table of the Lord. 
It is sometimes said that it is a "com- 



The Supper of the Lord. 157 

munion," and therefore all who will may 
be participants in it. But it is not simply 
a communion of one Christian with an- 
other. The New Testament does not so 
teach. He who has not sufficient grace and 
devotion to observe the first Christian duty 
has no right to ask admittance to the most 
sacred observance succeeding baptism. 
Baptism first, the Lord's Supper afterward. 
He who neglects or repudiates the one must 
not ask us to admit him to the other. 

It is frequently said that it is "the 
Lord's table/' and therefore all of his 
children should be invited to sit at it. But 
that it is the Lord's table only emphasizes 
the reason for inviting to it only those 
whom he has designated. If it were our 
table, we might make our own rules of ad- 
mission to it; then, we might welcome 
everybody, as we would welcome guests 
to our home tables. But, inasmuch as we 
have been put in trust of "the table of the 
Lord," we are bound to make such dis- 
criminations as be has indicated in his 
word. We have no right to say to those 
who stand near, "This is the Lord's table 
and you are all welcome to it." We would 
hardly approve the conduct of a servant 
who should set a table in our homes and 
then say to the wayfarers, "This is not 



158 Theology for Plain People. 

my table; it is my employer's — my mas- 
ter's — table, and therefore you are wel- 
come to all that is on it." 

And still more, he who would participate 
in the Lord's Supper should be an orderly, 
well-behaved Christian. He should show, 
by his life, that he has regard to the regu- 
lations established by the Master. He who 
is running here and there, ready to con- 
sort with anybody, no matter what their 
faith, or what their practice, ought not 
to be invited or admitted to an orderly 
observance of the Lord's Supper. To en- 
courage such an one to unite with us is 
to make sport of divine commands, to cast 
contempt upon the word and instructions 
of the Lord Jesus. We "can not drink of 
the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils." 
Nor should we drink of the cup of the Lord 
with those who repudiate or neglect his 
commandments; for his commandments are 
not grievous. It is not for us to say that 
none but those who have been baptized, 
and are walking orderly, may observe the 
Lord's Supper by themselves. To their 
own master they stand or fall. But we 
can not think that we ought to make a 
mockery of our own practice of baptism by 
saying to the world that it is a matter of 



The Supper of the Lord. 159 

indifference whether one is baptized or 
not So far as the New Testament goes, 
we have no right to suppose that any who 
were not baptized, and were not walking 
in an orderly way, were encouraged to par- 
ticipate in the Lord's Supper. It becomes 
us, therefore, to observe the same rule. 
Belief in Christ, baptism, an orderly walk, 
the Lord's Supper. Such is the rule for us. 



DOCTRINE AND LIFE. 



The foregoing articles are presumed to 
cover the ground of a theological system. 
They have dealt with all the great facts 
and principles of the Christian religion as 
taught in the Word of God; not that they 
have exhausted the subject, or discussed 
all the various phases of thought or inquiry 
suggested by any one of them. What has 
been aimed at is to give a brief, but com 
prehensive, view of the subject which, 
above all others, is worthy of the best 
thought and the most conscientious study 
of every member of the human race, and 
in such language that the plain man or 
woman, or the youngest Christian, can un- 
derstand it. 

But now that we draw to the conclusion 
of the series, it may be asked, What of 
it? What has all this discussion amounted 
to? What has so much doctrine to do with 
Christian living? Suppose we believe and 
accept all these things, what has that to 
do with the every-day round of toil and 
suffering, and temptation and — enjoyment? 
(160) 



Doctrine and Life. 161 

We answer, Much, every way. The rela- 
tion between doctrine and life is vital. Cor- 
rect doctrine is essential to correct con- 
duct, to holy living. It is yet all too com- 
mon to hear good people decry doctrine, 
as though it were a matter of no conse- 
quence, a burden, rather than a help in the 
affairs of life. There are those who tell 
us that "it matters not what a man believes, 
so long as he does right." But the truth is 
that he who has no moral conviction makes 
a great failure of life; and he who has 
no religious conviction is in the way of 
death. Still more, he whose religious con- 
victions are without authority, and are 
independent of God's Word — a merely hu- 
man theory of life — is essentially a heathen, 
and must share the doom of the heathen. 
"There is none other name given under 
heaven among men whereby we must be 
saved," than the name of Jesus Christ; and 
it is a matter of the greatest consequence 
what we think of the only Savior. It la 
said of Jesus that he has been made "both 
Lord and Christ." That means that he is 
not only the Anointed of God, he with 
whom the Father is well pleased, but he is 
the rightful Sovereign of human souls. To 
him has been given "all authority, in 
heaven and in earth"; that his Word is 
(12) 



162 Theology for Plain People. 

law to men, and his will is the end of all 
questioning. Whether men will or not, 
he has the dominion, and he who does not 
obey willingly and joyfully, must obey 
unwillingly and in agony of soul. There 
will be no appeal, when it is finally said 
to the ungodly, "Depart, ye cursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
his angels." There will be only joy and 
gladness when it is said: "Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of 
the world." The one class will obey with 
delight, and the other class will obey, 
though with grief and anguish. 

It is said that "as a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he." That does not mean, as it 
seems to be held by some, that if a man 
thinks he is right, he is right. To have 
a wrong thought does not, and can not, 
make any man right, or any course of con- 
duct right. The idea of the words quoted 
is that if a man has right thoughts he is 
right, and if he has wrong thoughts, he is 
wrong. The matter of greatest conse- 
quence is not so much what a man does 
as what the man is. To be is of more con- 
sequence than to do. Deeds are the product 
of the body's action, but what a man is 
pertains to his spiritual being, that which 



Doctrine and Life. 163 

must continue after the body has beea 
put off, when sinning will be mo longer 
an act of the body, but the act of the soul — 
its attitude towards good and evil, towards 
God and towards Christ. The same is true, 
in degree, here. Sin is not simply an ex- 
ternal act. A man stricken with paralysis, 
unable to lift his hand to his head, or even 
to speak, may yet be a most grievous sin- 
ner. He may curse God in his heart. He 
may regard his affliction as unjust and 
cruel, and may wish that some other had 
the power which he regards him who is 
called God as exerting. Nothing can be 
more sad than the case of one who fails 
to see the smiling face of God behind the 
clouds of his frowning providences. True, 
a Christian may lapse into such a state of 
mind; but it is usually the result of a will 
as yet not fully subdued, needing a large 
amount of discipline to fit it for what is 
to come after. It is remarkable that some 
of the happiest souls are those who inhabit 
the frailest and most painful bodies. It 
would be easy to cite cases of persons, help- 
less for decades, who yet bask in the sun- 
shine of Jehovah's face; who bless God 
with every breath, because of his goodness 
and his loving faithfulness. 
"Grow in grace/' says Peter, "even in 



164 Theology for Plain People. 

knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus 
Christ"; and that means that a growth in 
knowledge of Christ is an antidote to sin, 
a barrier against sinning. To know Christ 
is to recognize him as Savior, and to walk 
in communion with him. It is to know the 
great principles on which the universe is 
governed; to know the relation of the great 
doctrines of grace and glory to each other 
and to the soul of the student of divine 
things. To know Christ is to know what 
the Word of God teaches concerning sin 
and redemption. It is to know what Christ 
has done for the deliverance of his own 
from the thralldom of sin and for the eter- 
nal security of him who walks hand in 
hand with his Savior. 

It is the business of the Christian to 
become more and more acquainted with 
Christ; that is, to know more and more 
about the ways of God with man; to know 
more and more fully the process by which 
a depraved sinner becomes righteous, even 
as Christ himself is righteous, walking in 
love, because his soul, having been renewed 
by divine power and grace, is in harmony 
with the life and the will of him by whom 
the redemption of the soul was purchased. 

Attention to and a mastery of Bible doc- 
trine is a protection against the vagaries 



Doctrine and Life. 165 

and false theories of those who would 
lead God's people into the mazes of fa'Js 
and fancies, such as Mormonism, Spirit- 
ualism, Dowieism, Christian Science, The- 
osophy, and the various isms into which so 
many rush. It is said by physicians that 
some people, sound in health as yet, have 
a tendency to certain diseases, and than 
when conditions become favorable, they 
are quite sure to become subjects of the 
ailment. So it is in Christian life; there 
is in some a tendency to error. Unforti- 
fied by intelligent study of the Word, they 
are easily victims of the deceiver; being 
unable to discern the false, or to adjust 
facts with what is taught in the Word of 
God. He who has familiarized himself 
with the true teachings of the Word is 
not soon shaken in mind; and such a oa-3 
is rarely found among the seekers after 
new fads, or those who, having itching 
ears, heap to themselves teachers of 
philosophies and vain deceits, after the 
cunning and craftiness of men. 

Christian living is not an accident. It 
is not the result of chance. He who would 
live a godly life must know God. He must 
not only believe and know that there is a 
God, but he must know the character of 
God. He must know what God has done; 



166 Theology for Plain People. 

on what great principles lie acts; what 
are his purposes concerning the human 
race, and how he is to effect his purposes. 
And herein lies a great difference in the 
character and conduct of different people, 
even different Christians. 

There are those whose knowledge of God 
is what may be called fragmentary. They 
know something about God, and have cer- 
tain impressions which are unformulated 
and chaotic in their minds. They are 
creatures of impulse, now enthusiastic and 
active as Christians, and again indifferent, 
living carelessly, uncertain as to their 
state, whether they are Christians or not. 
Now they are on the mountain top, and 
now they are in the valley; now in light, 
and now in darkness. 

There are others who go along, steadily, 
firmly, one day much the same as another. 
They are neither greatly elated, nor greatly 
depressed. They can be relied upon at 
any time for such service as they can 
render, and are always ready to give an 
answer to any man asking them the rea- 
son for their hope. This difference in 
Christian character and service is very 
familiar to us, and if we ask the reason 
for it, we are quite sure to find it in just 
this, that the one has no clearly defined 



Doctrine and Life. 167 

and consistent view of the need and the 
way of salvation, while the other holds 
to the great truths, or doctrines, set forth 
in God's Word, and is fortified against the 
attacks of the enemy. 

The reliable, every-day Christian never 
decries doctrine; never speaks contemptu- 
ously of doctrinal sermons, or of doc- 
trinal study. He who has become forti- 
fied in the doctrines of God's Word, who 
has accepted and adopted a logical, coher- 
ent system of theology, even though it 
may be superficial, comes down to death 
with a confidence and a peacefulness which 
the contemner of doctrine rarely knows. 
"I know in whom I have believed," said 
Paul; and because he knew Jesus and 
"the power of his resurrection and the 
fellowship of his sufferings," he could say: 
"I am persuaded that he is able to keep 
that which I have committed to him 
against that day." That was Paul, the 
man of doctrine; the man who interprets 
for us, as no other has done it, the life 
of our Lord and the significance of that 
life. It was he who had studied and 
had taught the doctrines of God and of 
Christ who could say: "I am now ready 
to be offered, and the time of my depart- 
ure is at hand; I have fought a good fight; 



168 Theology for Plain People. 

I have finished my course; I have kept 
the faith; henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness which the 
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me 
at that day." And it is in harmony with 
the experience of Paul that other students 
of the things of God, who have systema- 
tized their knowledge and hold it intelli- 
gently, can look into the grave with a 
similar calmness, assured of a glorious 
resurrection and a crown of righteousness 
in that day. 



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